


The Only Monsters

by stephensmat



Category: The Village (2004), War of the Worlds (2005 Spielberg), War of the Worlds - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Invasion, Bad Color, Crossover, F/M, Post-Movie(s), Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-16 21:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11837601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephensmat/pseuds/stephensmat
Summary: The townsfolk were in awe of Ivy Walker, who had faced all their nightmares and won. The Elders were terrified of her, knowing that she had their every secret.The first hint of the Extermination came a year later. First the noises in the Woods changed. Then the War Planes came. The Red Weed was the final straw.A crossover between The Village and the 2005 War of the Worlds Movie.





	1. The Red Weed

**Author's Note:**

> An obscure combo, I agree.
> 
> This fic came purely from the fact that I once watched both movies in the same weekend. I imagined how the people of Covington would react if the Red Weed reached them, and the fic grew from there.

Ivy had returned from the Towns. Once Lucius had received the medicine, the Elders closed and locked the door. They spoke with Ivy, questioning her thoroughly. Ivy was content to speak, as long as she could stay with her fiancee.

She told them that the monsters in the forest were real after all. She had fought and killed one in self defense.

Her father said nothing to contradict her.

Ivy had stayed with Lucius all night, not even changing her muddy clothes until her older sister came in and forced her to get some sleep, a meal and a bath.

Ivy had done so, and her father walked her back to Lucius' side once she had awoken. She had apologized endlessly for the harsh words she had spoken to her father, since it had been discovered that his deception had protected the village from the monsters in the forest after all.

And Edward said nothing to contradict her.

Ivy had noticed the tread of shy little feet outside Lucius' home when she returned to his side. The boys were creeping around, trying to get a chance to ask Ivy about everything that had happened on her journey.

She ignored them, and none were brave enough to come out and ask. The woods were a place of mortal terror to the village-folk; and Ivy had walked, blind and alone, all the way to the far side of them and come back intact.

Lucius improved steadily, and Ivy allowed herself to join the evening meal a few days after her return.

Noah Percy's father had called for the attention of the village at the evening meal; and announced that his son had escaped the Quiet Room. It was declared that Noah had tried to follow Ivy... and that Those-They-Did-Not-Speak-Of had apparently left his bloody clothing at the place the Ceremony of Meat was performed, to inform the villagers of what happened to those that left the Village.

The Percy family, and indeed, most of the Elders had wept openly at the news. Several of the village-folk that weren't close to the Percy boy were secretly relieved, not sure what else they were going to do with their first and only attempted murderer.

Edward rose from his seat and declared that a funeral would be performed the next day; and that as always, they were grateful for the time that they were given.

Those that did not look to Edward, looked instead to his daughter Ivy.

She was crying too, but she was not sad. Ivy's expression was one of raw hatred.

When her father sat back down, Ivy rose from her seat and returned to Lucius. When her father tried to join her after the evening meal; he found the door locked. Ivy let nobody but the Doctor in for three days.

Nobody in the Village knew what had infuriated Ivy so much.

That night, the perimeter alarm rang, the bells tolling across the village. As the villagers scattered, Ivy left Lucius' side, and went out to sit on his front porch.

* * *

"Ivy! Get inside!" Kitty screamed from her house in open panic.

Ivy sat on the porch steps, immovable.

"Ivy! Please! They're coming!" Kitty was nearly hysterical, backing into her doorway. Dark shapes were running out of the distant mist. "They're coming! You have to hurry!"

Ivy didn't move.

Kitty was anguished. "Oh, sister... I'm so sorry!" She wailed, and slammed her door shut.

Ivy was alone in the village for several moments, and her face was filled with nothing but contempt. She had been scared once. And now that she knew the truth, she found herself disgusted with her panicky, overwrought sister.

Three large forms moved in on her, gathering around her on the porch. Ivy could hear the clicking and growling of them.

"You do not fool me, Papa." Ivy said quietly. Nobody would hear her. "Even through the costume, I can see your color."  **  
**

The lead creature shifted, and Edward lifted the mask. "I thought for sure you would."

Ivy stood up. Father and daughter regarded each other for a long moment.

"Why?" Ivy asked finally. "Did you not hear your daughter? She's pitching a fit in her cellar, thinking that she left me to get eaten. You put us through so much."

"I know." Edward said, voice heavy with grief. "Ivy, it had to be done. Noah leaving the village was unexpected, and..."

"And you had to convince everyone that we would be punished for what I did, going to get medicine." Ivy nodded. "I understand." Her head tilted as she gazed, sightless, in his direction. "I told you what happened in the woods. Did you think I wouldn't work it out?"

"I had hoped..." Edward started to say, then changed his mind. "I had hoped to spare you from guilt. Noah was your friend for a long time."

"Guilt?" Ivy challenged. "Or did you hope that I would believe in scary monsters again? Because if the creatures in the woods were real, that would neatly absolve you of every child that died since you started this mess."

"It was a mistake." Edward confessed. "I should have told you."

"Until Mister Percy announced it, I was convinced." Ivy countered. "I felt bad for ever being mad at you; and then I realized it was just another layer of deception. And you? You. Said. Nothing."

Long silence. The other Elders had approached, still in costume. Five monsters, gathered at the same doorsteps, staring down a blind young woman.

"Ivy, what happened to Lucius was a horror." Edward said finally. "One that has struck us all at some point; but not here. But it was the first crime committed in thirty years. There is nowhere in the world that can say that. Noah was an innocent; he wasn't malicious, he was confused. The world is full of genuinely malicious people."

Ivy was silent a moment, before she reached out and pinched the red cloak Edward's costume bore between her fingers. "When you revealed this farce to me; you told me that the day my sight failed, you felt so ashamed. I had thought you were ashamed of me; wanting a healthy son, and getting a blind tomboy daughter instead. But now I understand, you were ashamed of yourself; because if you had taken me to the Towns, you might have been able to save my eyes, and decided instead to keep me..." An ironic smirk ghosted over her lips. "... I was about to say, 'keep me in the dark.'"

Edward winced. His costume drooped, the huge monster's features bowed in shame.

"I have no wish to inflict what happened to Lucius on anyone else." Ivy said finally. "And I cannot summon the strength to unravel all this as long as his fate is still in question." Her gaze pointed at her father. "But I will not be ashamed of myself as you should be, father. If there is need in this Village for something of the Towns, I won't hesitate to make it clear that the way is open after all."

Edward nodded. "That is... fair."

"Go." Ivy snarled, pointing into the distance. "You've made your point. Everyone's trembling in their cellars, the boys will wake up screaming for another night, just as you wish them to." Ivy turned on her heel and made her way back inside to Lucius. She paused at the doorway. "Lucius is awake. He awoke a few minutes before the alarm was raised, and then slept again."

"That's good." Edward said quietly.

"Once he recovers enough strength to handle the truth, I will speak to my fiancee; and  _we_ will make a decision."

Edward tensed. "Ivy-"

His daughter slammed the door on him.

* * *

Christop had been on watch duty that night, and had seen from a distance, that Ivy had not gone inside. He had been too far away to see Edward lift his mask, but had a clear view of Ivy staring down five monsters, and then angrily sending them away. That story had spread swiftly among the people of Covington Village, and Ivy's name was being spoken in whispered awe.

Kitty had thrown herself at Ivy's feet and begged forgiveness for closing the door. Lucius would have run across the town to protect Ivy, no matter what danger he was in. Kitty had been too afraid. Ivy didn't say it out loud, but Kitty's husband had spooked and run too, leaving Ivy to face the Woods alone. Rumors had spread that Kitty had thrown him out of the house when he came back without Ivy.

Ivy never returned to her family. She had her things moved out of her bedroom and into Lucius' home.

Soon after, someone discovered a package at the Resting Rock, wrapped in paper and string. The Elders had unwrapped it in private, and found a parcel full of medicines. They were surprised. None of them had put it there, and Ivy had not left Lucius' side.

A week later, another parcel came, with medicine, spices, certain things they could not manufacture in the Village...

Who was leaving them became a mystery that unsettled the Elders. The Townsfolk believed that the creatures of the woods were leaving them for the good of the town, in return for the sacrifices of meat.

The third package included a letter, addressed to Ivy. Ivy would not allow her father to enter Lucius' home, even then, so Victor delivered it during his treatment of Lucius; and read it aloud to her.

It was signed: "From Kevin."

Ivy had dictated a response, and Victor had delivered the letter to the Resting Rock. As a Doctor, Victor was forbidden from sharing the contents of either letter with anyone, but from then on, the packages became much more specific, filling needs that had gone unanswered for far too long.

Lucius had recovered enough to walk, and he and Ivy strolled around the Village daily. She led him to the Resting Rock, near the edge of the Woods, where nobody was brave enough to approach.

What they spoke of was unknown to the village-folk, except that Lucius and his mother began to argue more often, until they did not speak at all. Edward knew. The next day, Ivy came to him for the first conversation she'd had with him willingly, and she'd admitted that she'd told Lucius the truth. She and her fiancee had debated endlessly on what to do about the secret, and resolved that they would need to give it more thought.

The medicine and other supplies came regularly, along with replacement parts, fabrics, new strings for abandoned instruments, and life improved steadily for a time. Rumors began to spread that Ivy had talked the creatures into supplying their town's needs. The moaning noises from the woods stopped. There were no further attacks, and the sightings from the watch towers stopped soon after. With the supplies coming in, Ivy was content to let the secret remain, since nobody was getting hurt by the secret any longer.

The townsfolk were in awe of Ivy Walker, who had faced all their nightmares and come back not only a survivor, but victorious. The village Elders were terrified of her, knowing that she had their every secret. She had not spoken of what she knew, too grateful that her fiancee had recovered. But she still held a great deal of anger, and if she ever gave into it, she could undo them all with a word.

The first hint of the Extermination came a year later.

* * *

Ivy heard it first.

It was a year since her Expedition. Eight months since the wedding.

The Midday meal was a happier time now. The roars and moans from the Woods had been silent since the care packages had arrived at the Resting Rock, and everyone felt lighter for it. In fact, it was rumored that the latest care package included some delicacy of the Towns that nobody had ever tried before.

"We are thankful, for the time we have been given." Edward declared, and everyone smiled, echoing the sentiment. Ivy squeezed her husband's hand, and they began to eat. There was something new in the baked breads. It was sweet and delicious.

"Cinnamon!" Ivy heard Mrs Clark murmur warmly. "I haven't had a cinnamon roll in thirty years!"

Ivy leaned close to Lucius. "What do you think?"

"Tastes nice." He said softly. He was still as soft spoken as ever, at least in front of people. When it was just the two of them alone, he would open up about many things. "I never thought of things such as this."

Kitty was savoring the taste herself. "I remember father speaking of cinnamon." She told Ivy quietly. "He was speaking with Mrs Hunt about a failed crop. I think that we had cinnamon once, perhaps before you were born."

"Spices take a long time to grow properly." Lucius offered.

Kitty was about to respond, when Ivy froze in her seat. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Kitty asked in surprise, when the sound came again, louder; and the whole town heard it.

It was carried on the wind, but from a much further distance than the village was used to. The howling, throaty roars of the creatures echoed from the trees; but this was something different. It was like a blast from an enormous horn blaring over the trees, only resonant enough that every member of the town heard it rumble, deep in their chests. It was... ominous.

Ivy felt Lucius grip her hand quickly, letting her know he was there. She searched the townsfolk for a moment, until she picked up the hint of her father's color. He wasn't moving.

Ivy's ears were the sharpest in town, and she heard the Elders whispering to each other. "Papa has called a meeting." She murmured to Lucius. "Just for the Elders."

"They probably want to discuss the sound." Kitty was close enough to overhear. "It has been some time since we have heard from... Them."

Lucius knew the truth, and he spoke low enough that only Ivy could hear him. "It means they don't know what the sound is. It means they aren't the cause of it."

* * *

That night, Ivy curled up under her husband's arm in preparation for sleep. She always rest her fingers on his scars; tracing them gently. Even a year later, she couldn't shake the fear that she had almost lost him once; even before she'd truly had him to begin with.

He stroked his fingers through her curls. "My mother asked after you today." He murmured. "She wants to invite us both to a private meal, just your family and mine."

Ivy stilled. Alice Hunt moved out of her own home when Ivy moved her things in, and now lived with the Percy family, at Ivy's direction. Some rather salacious rumors had started as a result, but were quickly squashed. She hadn't spoken a word to her father, or any of the Elders in some time. "What did you tell her?"

"The truth, only." Lucius promised. "That I would discuss it with you, and that I doubted you would be inclined, since I wasn't truly in favor of it myself."

Ivy nuzzled into him. She had wanted to do it since she was old enough to understand what it meant, and now she was free to do so. Even after eight months, it seemed like a wonderful dream. "I never meant to put you at odds with your mother, Lucius."

"You did not. She did it; as did your father." He assured her. "But the time will come when we can't put them off any longer."

"I know." Ivy sighed. "When I told father that we had set a date for the wedding, he demanded to know what we decided. I told him that on our first anniversary, we would either tell the townsfolk the truth, or join the council of Elders in keeping their lies."

Lucius stilled. "You did not tell me this."

"I just wanted him to stop asking for a while. If I had to do it again, I would have chosen another date." Ivy admitted. "Our wedding day was ours, as it should have been. Our first year as husband and wife should be just ours too."

"Mister Patterson had hinted that we may be appointed as Elders ourselves in a few months." Lucius commented. "Now I know why." He kissed the top of her head. "Why did you not announce it to everyone back then?"

Ivy's fingers gripped against his scars for a moment. "I was so afraid of losing you." She confessed. "I was so full of horror and panic that I wanted to die, just so that the feeling would stop for a moment. I cannot believe anything my father has ever told any of us, but he started this for a reason, and if there's even a chance that going out there makes it more likely that it could happen again..." She looked ashamed of herself. "Even knowing the truth, I am still too afraid."

He held her tightly, and they were silent for a time.

"My mother seeks to end the feud between you and your father." Lucius said quietly. "The Elders are terrified that your mutual silence could destroy the whole village."

_Good_. Ivy thought, but swallowed it before she could speak the word out loud. "That's why your mother wants to have dinner?" Ivy guessed. "I thought it was to remind us that she wants grandchildren."

Lucius laughed. Ivy thrilled to hear it. Shy, quiet Lucius Hunt only laughed for her. It was more real to her than their vows.

* * *

A few hours later, Ivy awoke from her sleep and sat bolt upright before her eyes were open.

Lucius was woken by the sudden movement. "Ivy?"

Ivy was still, trying to figure out what had woken her. The last time she'd reacted before waking up, Lucius was waiting on her porch steps, and the night had ended with a proposal. "I heard something. I think." She said finally. "It is a sound I do not recognize."

"Do you still hear it?"

Ivy listened. "No."

"Perhaps a dream?"

Ivy settled, uncomfortable. "Perhaps."

Silence.

"Do you not want children?" Lucius asked her suddenly, and Ivy's head whipped around so fast she almost fell over. He steadied her. "I ask, because... I know that you spoke to Victor during my recovery. You sought ways to delay the event."

Ivy softened. "I want to." She promised. "But... Four months until our first anniversary. If we decide we want to leave the Village..."

Lucius nodded. "That's what I thought. Ivy... even if we decide to reveal the deception, I fear that not everyone will want to leave."

Ivy's head tilted. "And you, husband? Would you want to stay?"

Lucius considered that for a moment, when they both froze. "I heard it." He whispered.

In the stillness of the night, came the distant sound of... thumping? They came in a regular beats of three. It wasn't a sound exactly, more like a vibration. The air quivered slightly as something in the distance echoed, from even beyond the trees.

"It sounds like... thunder?" Lucius guessed.

"I cannot smell it." Ivy thought aloud. "When there is rain, or even storm clouds in the distance, you can smell it on the wind." She listened for a moment as the rhythm continued. "The sound is moving." Ivy whispered. "I think. I'm not sure. It sounds somewhat like footsteps; only much much louder."

"There is no thing on four legs under God or Man that takes steps that heavy." Lucius said firmly.

Ivy's head tilted as she studied the sound. "Three legs. The pattern is... much like my own, when I use my walking stick. If it is walking on legs, it has three of them."

By this time, they had both drifted to the window, and leaned outside to listen. Lucius looked back and forth... and discovered that others were listening too. In the middle of the night, the town was waking up.

And then the first sound came again. A deep rich bass, with a lighter resonance singing through the air a moment later. In the middle of the night, with all the animals asleep and the town quiet, it was much clearer, though no closer. A distant, siren howl.

The next day, the care package did not come. It was the first weekend it had failed to arrive in eight months.

* * *

Lucius and Ivy sat at the Resting Rock, looking out into the woods.

"You are worried?" Lucius guessed.

"I am... concerned." Ivy commented. "The Care Packages came, as far as I am able to tell, from the gentleman who helped me by fetching those medicines that saved your life. He is the only one that knew I came from the Woods. Father says the other end of the woods is protected as a nature preserve; which is why he had resources close at hand. If the man was able to track me back here, then he would have seen the village. But the fact that he left the Packages anonymously..."

"He probably kept our secret." Lucius agreed.

Ivy glanced at him, and patted the rock next to her. Lucius sat down, and she put an arm around him. "It bothers you, that he did not come into the village himself?"

"It bothers me that everyone seems so desperate to keep a secret that they don't agree with." Lucius said, and on anyone else, the tone would have seemed angry. "Our world is built of secrets and fears and lies, and none of us know what the truth is, but we cling to the deception, no matter how much we hate it!"

Ivy knew that he had these moments, few and far between, where the thoughts that filled his mind came exploding out of his mouth. The outburst had been building for a long time.

She looked over at him. "The floorboards are different in our kitchen. They feel more flexible, as they do in the Quiet Room... And I know that the boards are flexible there for a hiding place."

Lucius reacted as she changed the subject so quickly.

Ivy's head tilted. "My father hid things from me, Lucius, and I have still failed to forgive him." It was not an accusation, just a reminder. "After what Noah did, and discovering the Elders' deception, and being abandoned in the woods by my own escorts... The only person in the whole entire world that I trust is you."

Lucius sighed and kissed her face tenderly. "The calender is concerning me. In less than four months, we will be required to challenge the Elders, or join them. I thought, that since you had proven the way to be open, perhaps there was another option."

Ivy was intrigued. "What's under the floor in the kitchen?"

"Supplies. Some cloaks, clothing, what few items might be considered valuable, and some dried foods that will not spoil for a time. Enough for both of us."

Ivy licked her lips. "You wish to leave?" She seemed almost hopeful.

"I wish to be prepared. The longer you and your father are at odds, the more fearful the Elders become. I fear that the waiting will only make the fear worse, and that there will come a point of no return."

Long silence.

"I  _do_  hate it." Ivy declared finally. "We're playing along with this awful farce and being bound by fears that don't mean anything to us." She bit her lip and reached out a hand. He took it automatically. "Is anyone watching?" She said softly.

Lucius looked around. "No."

Ivy walked slowly down the hill, into the woods. Lucius followed her, holding his breath. Even knowing the truth, the old fear ran deep. The edge of the woods was harder to define here, since few people went to the Resting Rock, but they knew when they hit forest. One step, green soft grass, two steps, and they were crunching of dried, dead leaves, and pine needles.

They were over the line, together in the woods.

"Noah found berries." Ivy said with a smile. "He brought them to me many times before you were there to tell me what color they were." She licked her lips. "They were delicious."

Lucius caught the hint, and in short order, they found a raspberry bush; with fresh, tart berries just starting to turn ripe. They sat under the trees, where none of their friends had ever dared walk, curled up in each others arms, gorging on berries until their lips were stained bright red.

It was naughty, and exciting and delicious; and they both enjoyed every minute of it.

"We had best show caution, when we go back." Lucius said finally. "The juice of these berries is all over our faces and hands."

Ivy giggled. "Here, let me clean that for you." She said and pounced forward swiftly, licking the juice from her husband's lips and chin. He returned the favor gladly, and neither of them spoke again for a long while.

* * *

They made their way back to their home, strolling leisurely, arm-in-arm.

On their way, they met someone headed in the other direction. It was Edward Walker, and August Nicholson.

"Father." Ivy said politely, but without much warmth.

Lucius blushed as August looked them both over, up and down, hiding a smirk as he did so.

If Edward noticed any disarray in his daughter, he failed to show it. "Ivy. It is good to see you well, and... happy."

Ivy flushed too. "I take it your secret meeting went poorly?"

"It wasn't a secret, Ivy." Edward sighed. "We don't know what's going on, any more than you do. We..." he rubbed his face for a moment. "It has been decided, that those sounds are being caused by something in the Woods, and we must discover what it is, before it frightens our friends any further."

Ivy set her jaw. "Travel safely. The deep wood is treacherous. Be careful for sink holes. The ground will fall out from under your feet..." She reached out a hand in his direction, and he squeezed her fingers briefly. "You are still the only father I have."

Edward smiled. A real smile, this time. "I'll be back before dark, I promise."

It was the most civilized Ivy had been with either parent in months, and Lucius had to admit that the ease in tension had improved the day. He did not comment on it as they returned to their home.

"I know what you're thinking." Ivy said as they changed out of their dirty clothes. "But I haven't forgiven him. I merely happened to be in a good mood."

Lucius said nothing, but couldn't help the smile.

"And yes, you may take that as a compliment if you wish." Ivy said, unable to help the smile on her own face. "And no, I will not tell you your color, stop asking."

* * *

Edward glanced around awkwardly, and slipped into the Woods, with August at his back. "August, I can tell that the quick witted remark is on the tip of your tongue." Edward commented without looking back at him. "Kindly leave it there."

August chuckled a bit, despite himself. "I will, Edward. Though if I may ask... how long is this distance between yourself and your daughter going to last?"

"That, unfortunately, is largely up to her." Edward remarked as they headed deeper into the trees. "I am too ashamed to force the issue, and too afraid of what will happen when she forces it herself."

"We all are." August commented. "There has been discussion about appointing Lucius to the Elder's circle."

"You cannot buy her silence." Edward said honestly. "Or his."

"We know, but you were right, when you said that we cannot continue this way of life forever on our own. With the support of Ivy's friend on the outside, we may yet last; but if there's a chance that Ivy will agree to continue this place, then she'll need a proper position. Most of the village already considers her somewhere between a lion tamer and a saint."

Edward was about to respond, when the faint sound of machinery came on the wind. It was unmistakably the sound of a powerful engine, but not from a car or truck.

Both men were frozen where they stood.

"A sound I have not heard in many years." August observed, his voice shaky. "But that is not coming from the road. We are still at an enormous distance from the edge of the reserve."

"Agreed." Edward hissed back. "Has someone built a factory in the woods? I took steps to ensure that would never happen."

"Much time has passed since then. We can only hope it is not so." August agreed.

They continued deeper into the woods, and the sound faded after a while. The rumbling returned; vibrating the forest ground gently, a resonance that they could feel in their bones.

"Whatever could that be?" August wondered.

Edward let out a shout of horror, pointing ahead of them. August followed his gaze, and felt his jaw drop open. About thirty feet away, at the edge of their visibility, the green and grey of the woods was being overpowered... by a climbing, clinging plant that covered the trees, the deadwood, the grass, the leaves, like a thick monstrous web; almost thick enough to carpet the whole forest before them.

And it was a frighteningly bright shade of  **red**.

"Edward, I was assigned to collect the animal carcass from the Ceremony of Meat." August whispered. "It was three days ago... and this was not here. Believe me, I would have noticed."

The two men moved close enough to touch the Red Weed, and Edward tugged at it for a moment. It was sticky and prickly, and it clung to the tree before him, even as he pulled at it. "It is a hardy plant. It is a creeper of some kind, and flexible enough that it will not snap away."

August was looking down at the ground. "It grows so quickly. I would swear before any court that I can see it moving before my eyes."

Edward chewed his lip for a moment. "Let us apply some intelligence to this matter. The sounds come from the east, and so does this plant. Our most productive growing fields are on the eastern edge of our village... And this devilish plant is not only moving quickly, it is a clinging, smothering creeper."

August nodded. "If the Weed reaches the village, it will not only terrify everyone, but it will cover the fields first, and we are coming close to harvest season."

Edward turned and strode back toward the village. "Alert the others quickly. We have to cut this Weed off and burn it away before it becomes visible to the village!"

* * *

Ivy woke sharply just after dawn, her nose twitching at the smell. "Smoke!" She said immediately. It was the wrong time of year for the firepits to be lit and the houses to need their fireplaces burning through the night.

And yet, there was smoke in the air.

Lucius was already awake and dressing hurriedly. "The wind is coming from the east. There are few homes it could be; or else the silo is burning."

Ivy hurriedly made her way to the wardrobe, scrambling for clothes. "If the silo is burning, it will destroy all our grain stores!"

But when they hurried to leave their home, they found a small crowd of people already gathered there to meet them.

They both froze, as a half dozen people pressed in, clamoring for Ivy. She held up her hands, trying to sort out one shouting voice from the others. "Be calm! What is happening?!"

Kitty got it out first. "Ivy, there is smoke coming from the Woods, and nobody can find father. You know the Woods, and..." Kitty hesitated. "It is said that you  _know_  Those-We-Do-Not-Speak-Of."

Ivy's face hardened. Lucius stepped a little closer behind her, leaning into her silently. "I have no knowledge." She said as calmly as she could. "But I will find out what I can. For now, make sure that the fire does not spread to the village; and take a headcount. Find out if anyone is missing. Bring buckets to the river, where it is closest to the western fields; just in case."

The instruction came so naturally, so easily; and Ivy didn't realize at first that she was giving orders. But as they all headed off to follow her instructions, Lucius leaned in. "You are good at that."

Ivy listened for anyone close enough to overhear, and lead him west, away from those that had come to see them. "Father said that there are tunnels, that lead from the village buildings into the woods, so that the Elders may pass unnoticed. One is in the Quiet Room, another in the Storage Shed."

There was nothing in the village that happened by accident. Ivy knew that her father was absent for a reason, and with the whole town feeling the edge of fear creeping in on them, she resolved to know what it was.

Ivy made her way to the school hall, when the wind grew stronger, and she paused, mid-step. "Lucius, do you smell that?"

Lucius paused and sniffed. "I smell the smoke, Ivy."

Ivy shivered. "As do I. But there is more."

* * *

Edward Walker returned soon after, and acted as though he had never been hard to find. He agreed with Ivy's instructions, and told everyone that unless it came as far as the perimeter, there was no reason that the ways of the woods should involve them. He returned to the school house after the evening meal. He often did so, to prepare for the next day's lessons.

When he entered the school house, he found Ivy waiting. She was sitting at the student's desk in the front row, second from the left. It had been her assigned seat when she was a student.

"When you were a child, you were always so eager to get to school." Edward said by way of greeting. "I was so glad I chose teaching as a profession."

Ivy smiled, just a little, but she didn't say anything.

Edward sat down on the edge of his desk. "Is something bothering you, Ivy? Because if you just wanted to talk, you could have approached me at dinner."

"You would not want me to be in a talkative mood when there are people about." Ivy said calmly. Too calmly. Her reluctance to take part in the secret of the village was obvious, and her manner with him became cold whenever it came up. "The care packages on the Resting Rock have stopped. There are sounds, new sounds, coming from the woods. And now the smoke."

Edward nodded., though she couldn't see it. "I am aware. You want to know if perhaps there is more to the story?"

"There usually is, where the woods are concerned." Ivy commented blandly. "Are you making the fires in the woods?"

Edward sighed. "Yes. The last few days, the village Elders have been aware of an... infestation in the woods. There's a new kind of weed, the like of which we have never seen before. It grows so thickly that it strangles other plants, and it grows so swiftly that one can actually see it creeping over everything."

"And so you burn it?" Ivy seemed confused. "We have patrols along the edge of the town limits; surely frightening people with smoke is the greater of two evils."

"Ordinarily, yes." Edward sighed. "But this new weed is a bright... almost unnatural  _red_."

Ivy twitched, despite herself, at the sound of the word. Even knowing that it wasn't truly evil, even knowing that speaking the word aloud would not bring disaster down on her, she still had superstition enough to flinch at the right name of The Bad Color.

Edward saw the reaction and nodded. "You see, even hearing the word makes you flinch; and you know the truth of it." he sighed. "There are wildflowers and berries in the woods that grow in The Bad Color, and the Elders are quick to make sure it is not visible from the town. Ordinarily, it's a matter of uprooting a raspberry bush or two, and burning it after dark. This new weed grows so fast we're working day and night to try and keep it away."

Ivy said nothing for a long time. "I wonder sometimes, what you would have done, had my hair darkened enough to make me a true redhead."

Edward couldn't help the ironic smirk. "I wonder that sometimes too."

"But I must admit to being guilty of keeping a secret, myself." Ivy confessed.

Edward looked up in surprise. "Oh? If you mean sneaking over the border to help yourself to those berry bushes yourself, we already knew."

"Not that. The whole town is worried." Ivy explained. "They're terrified of the woods. But Lucius is not, and I have been honest with him. He suggested I come to you with what I know."

"Know about what?"

"You should be cautious with this Red Weed." Ivy swallowed. "The smoke, coming from the woods? There is... a smell on the wind. Whenever the smoke comes this way, I can smell it, just barely. The smoke... it smells like Lucius' home, the day Noah stabbed him. It smells as my clothing did when you pulled me away from him... And on your hands at the evening meal tonight."

Edward started. "You can smell it? I have been working with this weed for two days, and have noted no strong odor."

"I may be the only one in town who can pick up the scent, and know it well enough to name it." Ivy said with grim certainty. "The smoke coming from the woods is thick with the smell of blood."

* * *

"Ivy was correct." Victor reported, with a sample of the Red Weed in a small sample container. "I have tested the samples we brought back, and this weed... It seems to be filled with neither water, nor chlorophyll. We have all handled it, uprooted it... What we thought was juices of some kind... Indeed, the majority of the Red Weed is sustained by... blood."

The Elders all shivered hard at the deceleration. Violence of any kind was more than taboo. It was violence that had driven them all to this impossible life-long charade, and violence that put it all in jeopardy.

"Sustained by it?" Edward repeated. "As in, it lives on blood? Where would such a large collection of plant life come across a supply of such a thing?"

"I cannot imagine." Victor confessed. "There are carnivorous plants in some parts of the world, but to have rooted in supply enough that it runs through the entire Red Weed is beyond comprehension."

* * *

Two days and nights passed. The Elders were rarely seen, which was less startling than it seemed at first. With the harvest so close, everyone knew their assignments, and there was little more for the Elders to organize until the majority of the work was done.

Ivy knew that there was more to the duties of a Village Elder than was generally known, and wasn't concerned until the smoke started. And then Lucius was informed that Edward was feeling ill, and that as his eldest son-in-law, he would be required to lead the village at the evening meal.

Public speaking held all the terror of hell for Lucius Hunt, and rumors began as to why Kitty's husband was not chosen for the honor, as she was Edward's eldest child. Ivy had heard the whispers that her sister had still not taken Christop back.

With each day, the smoke grew closer to the Town, and still less was seen of the Elders. When they were in view, they looked exhausted.

The fear was creeping again. Some had come to believe that the Village had achieved more than a mere truce with the creatures after Ivy's expedition, but now the suffocating fear was coming back. Lucius noted that he and his wife had more privacy as they edged closer to the woods, people avoiding the trees as much as possible.

The flicker of the flames was close enough to become visible from the Perimeter, though news about what was being burnt was still an open question.

The whole Village crowded around the front step of the Main Hall, as there wasn't enough room inside for every member of the town. Alice Hunt made the announcement.

* * *

"We have been studying the movement and the frequency of the flames since their discovery." Mrs Hunt declared to them all. "The fires are very carefully controlled, in much the same manner as we did, when clearing fields for growing."

"But Those-We-Do-Not-Speak-Of are carnivorous!" Someone shouted. "Why would they grow crops?"

"They would not." Alice held up her hands, calling for calm. "It is obvious that if the fires are so tightly bound, then they are not a threat. The Elders believe that Those-We-Do-Not-Speak-Of Woods are burning a perimeter of their own, so that none of their kind might be seen in the Village, even by accident."

There was silence, as they all turned this over in their minds. Lucius heard Ivy snort, but she was restrained enough that nobody else noticed.

"For thirty years, we have been careful to maintain our own perimeter, and have seen no sign, until now, that Those-We-Do-Not-Speak-Of have done the same. But obviously, for there to be a fair truce, they will have to keep it as well."

There was a loud murmuring.

Alice finished their cover story. "In any event, the Forbidden Woods are not for us. Until something crosses The Line, we have no reason to fear."

"Things have changed!" Someone yelled. "Things are not the same since Ivy Hunt came back!"

Alice started to call over them, when Ivy spun toward the north with a look of naked fear on her face. "Aah!"

Sudden silence. An instant later, they all heard it. It would have been impossible not to. At first it seemed as though thunder was breaking, though the sky was clear. But the booming noise that shattered the sky was followed by the unearthly howl of a screaming soul.

And then, they all saw it. It was vaguely triangular, zooming through the sky like a huge grey bird. Its wings were fixed and swept back, and it cracked across the sky faster than anyone could follow it, roaring off the other way; loud enough to make the trees wave back and forth in its wake.

Everyone was screaming, scattering in every direction, as though the sky was coming down on their heads, which it very nearly was.

The more fearful of the townsfolk were rolling around on the ground, bawling their eyes out with their faces pressed into the dirt and their hands covering over them. The children were running in every direction, hysterical.

The Elders were crouching low, looking upwards in shock, but they held it together.

Ivy had her hands clapped over her ears at the unnatural shriek of the flying machines. Lucius looked stunned by the sighting, as had most of the townsfolk; but unlike them, he immediately looked to Ivy's father.

Edward and his wife were talking to each other, and Lucius barely heard Tabitha say the unfamiliar words. "Fighter Jets."

And then, in quick succession, it happened twice more, as two more planes crossed from horizon to horizon, faster than the eye could track; vanishing over the distant Trees.

A moment later, the explosions started, coming over and over like thunder rumbling in the distance. The horizon, beyond the tree line, lit up with snaps and flashes of light; which faded as the explosions ran out.

Edward ran swiftly to the town bell, and pulled the rope firmly, sending out a warning to the town, as he did during one of the drills. The townsfolk reacted as they had been trained to their entire lives, and ran for their homes.

Ivy was walking awkwardly, waving a hand in front of her. She was walking with barely restrained haste, and he could hear her mumbling to herself. She was counting her footsteps. If she ran, or changed her stride at all, she would lose her place and get lost, though it was clear she wanted to run. Lucius came up behind her and caught her outstretched hand in his, as he always did. Ivy didn't bother to ask who it was, smiling in relief. "When I heard Noah had attacked someone, I wanted to run to you. But I couldn't without losing my place." She said quietly. "What on earth was it?"

Her husband gave her a quick description. "It was a machine, but I have never heard of a machine that could fly. Your father knows what it was, but I think that he is more afraid than we are." Lucius hissed to her. "What do we do?"

"We go to our home, and we get our provisions." Ivy told him. "I think that if Father has lost control of events, then  _this_  is the point of no return."

* * *

The Elders waited until everyone was hidden in their basements, and held a quick conference.

"Edward, that was surely not a passenger jet." Alice hissed. "That was the work of the military. How can we possibly explain that?"

"We cannot." Victor had a hand to his chest. "Perhaps there's no reason we need to. All we need do, is admit that there is no explanation." He looked up again, almost superstitious. "I must admit to being shattered by the experience myself."

"We have to say something!" Tabitha insisted. "Even if it is unequal to the task, there has to be something."

"I don't know that our explanations are satisfying anyone." Edward sighed. "When Ivy left on her mission, the best I could come up with was a 'bag of magic rocks' to protect her from harm."

There was a beat of amusement, despite themselves.

"I did not see who heckled, but I heard his call." Robert put in. "And he was right. Things have been changing for the last year. The aircraft was the final straw."

"No." Edward sighed. "The final straw will be the Red Weed."

Heavy beat.

"Why now?" Tabitha asked. "Edward, you told me that the Trust was paid off for many more years to ensure the Preserve is sealed to both road and air traffic."

"It was." Edward nodded. "At least, it was thirty years ago. My information ends the day we left the Towns."

Alice was still looking to the horizon. "What if they finally did it?" She whispered. "We hear heavy machines and sounds of explosions. War planes are cracking the sky, and flying low across the trees. My father told me that they fly low and fast when they wish to attack something by surprise."

"A war?" Victor whispered in dread.

Long silence as they all turned that over in their heads.

"I should return to the Woods." August said finally. "It is unwise, to leave the burn-off unattended for too long."

They all nodded, and he excused himself. Edward had yet to sound the all clear, so August had no need to take special caution when crossing the Forbidden Line.

But when he approached the tree line, he found someone was staggering out of the woods to meet him.

August froze. The man was fairly young, but it was hard to tell. His body was hunched over in exhaustion and pain, his eyes were wild, and he had clearly not washed, eaten, or shaved in many days. He was wearing a tattered uniform, with 'Walker Wildlife Preserve' written across the back, and 'Kevin' on his nametag. A whistle hung around his neck, and he was clutching an empty canteen in one hand... and a gun in the other.

August put his hands up. "Don't shoot!"

The man looked at August, and barely registered him, before he pitched forward and landed face down in the grass, unable to catch himself.

August swallowed, looked back toward the village, and finally ran over to help the young refugee.

The wretched man turned his gaze upward as August hovered over him, and at the last of his strength, he reached out and pulled the cleaner man close. "...'m lookin'... for Ivy Eli'abeth Walke.." He rasped out, and fell into unconsciousness.


	2. The Expedition

They moved a bed to the Quiet Room and moved the stranger there.

"His uniform is of the Wildlife Rangers that were hired to protect the outer perimeter of the Woods." Edward reported to the others. "He asked for Ivy by name. Either this is the man she met, or he has been made privy to the details."

Victor came out of the Quiet Room and made his prognosis. "He is not injured or sick. It's exhaustion and thirst alone that caused the collapse. He woke a few moments ago and asked for water. Ivy confirmed that it is the same man she met on her journey. She is with him now. It seemed the best option, as she's the only person here that he knows."

Alice came to join the other Elders as swiftly as she could. "Lucius has already alerted the village. I was unable to catch him in time. Everyone knows that someone came from the Towns."

Tabitha was wringing her hands. "We could... The young man was in considerable distress; we could tell them that he barely escaped Th-"

"No." Edward said finally. "Enough is enough. We keep layering lies on top of more lies, and enough is enough. There's a weed growing so fast it's going to strangle the whole forest, but we don't dare ask for help clearing it, because it's a color we picked out of a hat to be unlucky. There are war planes sending people hiding under their own beds, and we refuse to tell anyone that they're meant for our protection. There are explosions in the distance, and they haven't stopped and the best we can do is tell people not to ask."

The Elders looked at each other, and most of them were surprised to see there was more agreement on their faces than was expected.

"I agree." A small voice put in, and they all turned to find Ivy in the doorway. "Father, Kevin says he is well enough to speak to the village, and if half of what he told me is to be believed, then telling the truth is the most unimportant of our worries."

* * *

"Here it is, straight up." Kevin said simply. "This Village may just be the last bit of human civilization left standing."

His words set off a roar. The whole Village was crammed into the Town Hall, practically hanging off the rafters. Nobody wanted to gather outside after the fighter jets had gone by overhead, no matter how crowded it was, and Kevin had gathered enough strength to speak. The Elders were lined up on stage as always, but this time, Ivy was on the stage with them; a fact that had not gone unnoticed.

"This is kind of a difficult story." Kevin sighed. "There are a lot of details I won't tell you, because... well, mostly there's no point. But here's the guts of it: I'm the one that Ivy Walker met a year ago. My job is to patrol the outer fence of the Preserve; and make sure that nobody gets into the Woods from the outside. There have been guards around the entire forest for the last thirty years... And when I saw Ivy climb over the fence, begging for medicine, I found out why. Nobody knew this was here, and when I found out her name was Walker, I decided to keep the secret. But I did a little internet research and it turned out that if someone needed the meds Ivy was asking for? They might need follow up treatment. So I gathered some supplies and hiked into the woods myself over the weekend. When i saw the place, I didn't have a clue what this place was, so I left the package behind. The next weekend, I did the same thing."

During this little speech, several of the townsfolk looked at each other. He was using terms and language that they didn't recognize, but the testimony was putting holes in the story that the Elders had given them.

Kevin looked to Edward. "The Reserve was paid for out of the Walker Estate. I suppose that made you my boss."

"Quite likely, though I notice you used the past tense in that statement..." Edward commented.

Kevin sighed. "As of a week ago, it doesn't matter. We have been... invaded."

"The Russians?" Alice guessed.

"Russians?" Kevin repeated. "How long have you people locked yourself up in this nuthouse?" He spun back to the crowd as they reacted to his scorn. "No, sorry. That wasn't..." He rubbed his face. "It started a week ago. The massive storms came, but they didn't make sense. The power went out, the phones went down, the Internet, satellites, all of it. Nothing short of using Ham Radios was able to work anymore, and..." He saw that he was losing them. "Anyone who has a clue what I'm talking about? Raise your hand."

Nothing.

Kevin rubbed his face again. "Fine. Um... Unnatural lightning storms showed up all over the planet within an hour of each other, and then there was no communication... anywhere. One of those storms hit Pennsylvania, which is not that far from here... And I gotta figure that what happened there, happened everywhere else." His eyes turned dark, haunted by things being brought up in his mind. "We have been invaded. Not by Russia, or anyone else from... well, this planet. And before you say anything, I know how insane it sounds. My definition of bizarre changed when i saw the costumes hidden in the Woods, but even to me, I would have thought an Invasion from outer space was ridiculous. Then it happened."

Edward twitched at the mention of the costumes, but nobody else seemed to pick up on it. "Are you certain of this? As you said, news was hard to come by."

"A few radios that used valves and tubes were still active after the EMP, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were less than a hundred of those left in the country." Kevin assured him. "The story is the same everywhere: Massive war machines that stand hundreds of feet tall came rising out of the ground and started torching everything in sight. Washington. New York. London. Berlin. Sydney. Moscow. Melbourne. Chicago. Beijing. Tokyo. Paris. All of them are... gone."

The town recognized this was bad news, but the names of the cities meant nothing to them. But the Elders understood and were turning pale.

"We saw the air things." Ivy offered. "The machines that flew over the village; fast enough to shake the sky. That was the Invaders?"

"No, that was us." Kevin told her, and the audience broke out murmuring again. "Didn't know about planes either, huh?" Kevin guessed. "Well, don't be too impressed. The Martians may be using ground forces, at least so far as I know... But they're still way too much for us. Information is hard to find, but so far: Nothing we've thrown at them even comes close. We're fighting with bows and arrows against the lightning." Kevin rubbed his eyes against the nightmares. "When Pennsylvania went dark, everyone knew the Tripods would be on their way, so they ran. Millions of people, all on foot, because there wasn't anything left that could carry them. I split off from the crowd and headed for the woods."

"Well, of course, you are more than welcome to wait out the war here with us." Edward told him.

"...W-Wait out the war?" Kevin repeated blankly, his eyes going darker still. "Forgive me, Mister Walker; seems you missed the point entirely: The War is Over. We lost. The world of man has fallen. The Earth belongs to The Martians."

"How did you get past the creatures of Covington Woods?" Someone shouted.

Kevin slumped, just a little. "Really? I just told you all that, and the only thing you want to know..." He sighed. "Fine. I got past them, because they aren't real. The monsters in the red coats are fake. I know, because I found the costumes on my way in."

Stunned silence.

"That's not true!" Someone shouted.

Kevin shrugged, unconcerned. "Okay. Then how did I get in?"

"Prove it!" Someone else shouted, sounding angry now.

Kevin stared right back. "I don't have to prove it. Stay, go; I really don't give a damn. Either way, none of us are likely to live out the week."

"Kevin-" Edward started to interrupt.

"THERE ARE REAL, LIVE, HONEST-TO-GOD MONSTERS OUT THERE KILLING PEOPLE BY THE BILLIONS!" Kevin shrieked, so sudden and violent that everyone jumped back from him in fear. "YOU THINK I'M IMPRESSED BY YOUR DAMN HALLOWEEN COSTUMES? THEY'RE DEAD! EVERYTHING'S **DEAD**! WE TRIED TO FIGHT, AND MORE PEOPLE DIED, AND WE TRIED TO RUN AND MORE PEOPLE DIED, AND WE TRIED TO HIDE AND MORE PEOPLE DIED! THEY'RE ALL DEAD! DO YOU GET THAT?! MY FAMILY, MY FRIENDS, MY HOME, MY CITY; THEY'RE ALL DEAD, DEAD,  _DEAD_!"

Absolute silence reigned for a full minute. The only sound was Kevin breathing hard.

Ivy rose, came over to Kevin, reaching a hand out until she touched his shoulder. He flinched away from her as though she was on fire, and she drew back a bit, leaving her hand in the air, reaching out. Kevin settled and took her hand. She spoke in his ear for a few seconds, and Kevin nodded, stepping off the stage. The audience parted for him instantly as he made his way out of the Hall.

Edward rose to speak before the assembled townsfolk. "I'm afraid... that it is true. Of the invasion from another world, I know only what the rest of you do, but what he just said about the woods? It is truth."

There was a few moments of stunned disbelief. The entire town held their breath.

And then the screaming started.

Edward was waving his arms, shouting for them to listen. After a discreet interval, Lucius left them to it and went after Kevin.

* * *

Kevin had gone as far as Covington Square, and found the long tables where the evening meal was taken. The schedule of the town had been thrown out of order, and there were still a few scraps of the last meal. Kevin didn't hesitate, snatching up anything that looked halfway edible.

"There is proper food in the stores."

Kevin looked over and saw Lucius coming over. Kevin picked up a half eaten roll and held it out, as if displaying it. "I had to hide out in the Ranger Station for five days. The only food there is for coffee. First thing that went down was power, so the food had spoiled. I've been trying to live off bad milk and stale crusts. Fresh Leftovers is a luxury."

Lucius conceded the point and did not comment on it as Kevin collected the scraps; but he kept pace with the stranger.

Kevin looked back at him. "Was there something else?"

Lucius pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, swallowed, and started reading from it. "Kevin. I wish to thank you for your kindness to Ivy last year. We have always been told that the the Towns beyond the woods are where wicked people live, and had Ivy been forced to find her way into one of your 'cities', she would likely have not come back. Your kindness not only saved her life, but it saved mine, for I was the wounded person in need of medicines. It would be a terrible thing for me to let that act of generosity pass unnoticed." Lucius' gaze flicked up to him, then quickly back to the page. "The End."

Kevin took this in, and his face softened until it seemed almost normal again, the haunted look fading a bit from his eyes. "You're welcome."

The two of them glanced back at the Town Hall as the sound of screaming grew louder and angrier.

Kevin glanced back at Lucius. "Thirty years, huh?"

"Closer to forty, now." Lucius nodded. "I am told that I had my first birthday here."

Kevin sighed. "Well. Take it from the guy that didn't believe in aliens: It's not an easy thing to twist your brain around a change that big, and have to do it instantly."

* * *

The screaming continued, Edward helpless against the weight of the noise, when a piercing tone rang out, loud enough and pitched enough to make everyone clap their hands over their ears. Ivy had blown Kevin's whistle, hard enough to power over even the brewing riot.

When there was silence, Ivy rose awkwardly to her feet and felt for her cane. She tapped her way to the edge of the stage, taking longer than she needed to, letting people get used to the return of silence, in anticipation for her words.

"I was angry too." Ivy said finally. "When i left, my escorts could not overcome their fear; even after being told that the rules had changed. And I must admit to being helpless against my fear, even knowing the truth. Fear is like a poison that runs deep through your soul. So is rage. When I returned, I thought that I would suffocate for the anger I felt towards my father."

Dead silence.

"But even trembling in the woods at night, I knew without question that I would keep going." Ivy went on. "And even in the midst of my deepest wrath, I knew that eventually, I would give my father this chance to speak the truth to you. Both from the same reason. It was my father's fear of what had happened to his brother that started The Lie. And it was his rage against the Towns that forbade us to go back. And then he broke both those rules, because the one thing we have that can overcome both fear and rage... is love."

Silence.

"This place was started, out of a desperate need to protect something that is loved. And that something is all of us." Ivy declared. "I do not agree with it. I do not need to agree to forgive. And I do not need to forgive to let go of my rage. And neither do any of you."

She was giving them permission to forgive and be angry at the same time, and it was what the Town needed to hear.

"My father and the other Elders hoped to build a place that could protect innocence itself; but they thought that innocence could grow out of deception. I do not know what Monsters may truly lurk outside the woods now..." Ivy was finishing up. "...but I do know that the only monsters within these woods, and indeed, in this village... is what our fathers and mothers brought with them."

She did not have agreement, but she had blunted the rush of anger enough that there was a chance for discussion again. Ivy shuffled back to her seat.

Edward was stunned by Ivy's little speech, enough that Alice had to take over the rest of the meeting. "There are many things in our past actions that are unforgivable. They are also... over. This morning, we received testimony regarding the world beyond the forbidden woods, for the first time in over thirty years. We now have to decide what to do about it."

* * *

"They've been in there over an hour." Kevin commented to Lucius. "If they decided not to vote me off the island, you'd think at least one of them would come out to let me know."

Lucius didn't have a clue what an 'island' was, but he spoke reassuringly, as best he knew how. "Secrets cover every inch of Covington." He promised the newcomer. "Quite often, the silence gives more than words. Nobody here says what they feel or think."

August strode out of the Town Hall toward the square. "Kevin, would you join us in the Town Hall, please? The good people of Covington Village have reached a decision."

"They have?" Lucius commented. "Not the Elders?"

"Alice Hunt thought it best to put the matter to a public vote. The Elders were not allowed to cast votes themselves."

"What did they decide?" Kevin asked.

"None of them know what to believe about anything after being told that they have been deceived so long. They want... The decision has been made that an expedition must be sent back to the Towns, that we might have a more faithful account of things as they stand now."

Kevin let out a bark of mirthless laughter, but stopped himself. "Who're they gonna get that's stupid enough to pull that one off?"

* * *

"ME?!" Kevin shrieked. "NO! No way in hell!"

"Kevin, you must appreciate the position we are all in." Edward tried to calm him. "We have nothing, and nobody will believe anything now. Not without proof. A problem that is entirely our fault, I will grant you, but while most people in this village have lived with bogeymen as a fact of life for thirty years; the notion of an Alien Invasion does defy conventional reason."

"It's not the only story in the village that does." Kevin almost yelled. "If you need to see it so damn badly? Then you go without me."

Alice Hunt and Edward Walker traded a look. "Kevin, none of us have left the Woods in almost forty years. If we don't come back, what happens then? We need a guide."

Kevin shook his head. "I'm not going back out there."

"Kevin..." Ivy said kindly. "My father and mother were so scared of your world that they ran away and pretended that if we ever tried to go back, something would eat us. What manner of danger do you think they would subject you to?"

Kevin glared hard at Ivy. "They weren't wrong. At least, they aren't any more. I haven't told you what the Martians do to their prisoners."

Edward and Tabitha were giving Ivy a sick look. Finally, Edward stood up. "I will go." He said finally, and the Elders stared at him in a silent uproar.

"Edward!" Tabitha hissed, but he waved his wife down.

"I will go, alone if I have to." Edward declared. "Ivy is correct. I was the one that conceived of this village; the experiment is my own responsibility. If there is to be a risk, it is mine to take." He looked to Kevin. "But I could still have need of a guide. The dangers of the Woods are known to me, but my knowledge of the Towns is forty years out of date, and apparently an invasion has occurred since then."

Kevin was silent. "I'll take you as far as the road." He said finally. "We'll last longer with help, but move faster with a small team. We'll need a third. If you ain't gonna take my word for it, and nobody trusts you any more..."

Ivy turned and whispered to Lucius quickly, and he hissed a response. The whole town pretended not to hear them argue quietly about who was to go with them.

Kevin spoke again. "We'll need someone you'd be willing to believe. We'll need someone who doesn't freeze. Someone young and strong. We'll need someone fearless; and preferably someone who can be quiet. Silence is survival out there."

The whole town turned the list over in their minds. After years of careful work, the whole village was full of panicky people who fell to pieces at the sight of their own fathers in Halloween costumes. There were very few people left who were not afraid of the dark.

After a moment, Christop turned to stare openly in Lucius' direction. After another moment, half the town was looking to Lucius.

Ivy slumped in her seat. She knew what they were looking at.

The doors exploded open again, and one of the watchmen came running in. "Mister Walker! Something terrible has happened!"

* * *

Kevin watched everyone discreetly. They were hardly the first horrified people he'd seen during the week, but this felt different. The Red Weed had managed to creep into town and smother the western fields, and do it in the brief window between the Elders finding him on the edge of the woods and the meeting in the Main Hall.

Kevin had walked down to take a closer look at the Red Weed, and found he was there alone. The rest of the village was recoiling from it as though it was radioactive.

Eventually though, Lucius, and the Elders came to join him.

"It grew this far into town within twelve hours." Edward exclaimed with restrained horror. "It will surely cover over the village by nightfall tomorrow."

"It's inedible." Kevin sighed. "I got hungry enough to try it on my way in, and you can't eat it. And aside from the smell, its only real threat is that it climbs over everything. Don't knock it. They brought the Red Weed, and it's not heavy enough to collapse your homes. If it comes to that, it makes the perfect hiding place and it's easy enough to push through. I've done it for two straight days."

"The Red Weed is smothering our crops." Edward explained. "We were close to harvest season, which means as a matter of season, our stores are waiting to be replenished after the winter months. There are greenhouses, but they cannot hope to produce enough to feed everyone. Even if we found a way to banish this infernal parasite, the crop has been destroyed!"

Kevin looked back at the farmers, who were using every ounce of their courage to only stay fifty feet from the Red plant. "How much food do you have left?"

"Enough for several weeks, at the very most." Edward reported.

Kevin shrugged, unconcerned. "Longer than most places have got."

"And what happens after that?" Edward said slowly, as though spelling out a simple concept to a dim-witted student.

Kevin snorted. "Mister Walker... I'd be surprised if it mattered by then. You're less than a hundred miles from the Tripods. They can cover that distance in an hour. I know you don't believe me, but trust me, I've seen it. They stand hundreds of feet high. Those woods are ankle deep to them. Sooner or later they'll notice the buildings, or the smoke of a fireplace, and they'll come here too. If you try to take these people away, then what food you have now is enough for the marauders on the road to come after you. Several weeks being fed and hidden under the Red Weed in your own home? Frankly, that's expecting too much."

Lucius and Edward stared at the jaded survivor in disbelief.

Kevin rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know. You don't buy it."

"We don't doubt your word, Kevin, or your intention." Edward promised. "But we built this place in the hope of moving away from such horrors. We aren't willing to give up the fight for that ideal."

Lucius and Edward traded a nod at that.

Kevin didn't even sigh. "You will be." He said simply.

"We have to go back." Lucius said tightly. "Not for medicine, but for simple food."

Kevin snorted. "Trust me, there ain't nobody out there that'll have any to spare."

"We have some resources at our disposal." Edward waved it off. "Enough to keep this place hidden for thirty years, even without me there. There will be enough to arrange food."

Kevin just looked at him. He had nothing but pity on his face.

Edward nodded. "We leave immediately. We cannot wait for morning any longer; and best we move while we have as much daylight as possible to work with."

* * *

"You must be careful." Ivy said tightly. "If there's danger, stay to cover, and come home. Even a glimpse of these 'tripods' will be enough."

"No, it will not." Lucius told her honestly. "The point of the expedition is to be sure. If these tripods are the work of man after all, then it is just another deception. Even Kevin may be another lie."

Ivy paused at that. "What is your meaning?"

"You never saw his face." Lucius pointed out. "You had only one conversation with the man that helped you, and now, just as we draw close to the moment that you and I might convince the village that there is no danger in leaving; a stranger comes in, confesses to being in your fathers employ, and he insists that it's too dangerous after all. Of all reasons, he has declared that creatures from the stars have come to kill us. Your father could not have arranged it any better if he wished to keep us all here."

Ivy was dumbstruck. "I had not considered that. Do you believe that is the case?"

"I don't know, but I do know the only way to make sure."

Ivy looked sick. "Yes."

"If you don't want me to go, I will stay." Lucius told her honestly. "Someone else can go in my place."

"I would accept nobody else as witness." Ivy confessed. "There is nobody else brave enough to face the woods; there is nobody else I trust to be honest... and there is nobody else that would accept it, when I went along with them."

Lucius froze. "You are not coming, surely?"

Ivy gave him a grim smile. "Lucius, my love... I'm the only one that has made the journey before. If you need a guide; who else in the village is qualified?"

"Your father will forbid it."

"A fact that holds little fear for me now." Ivy countered primly. "But I have a solution to that: We won't tell him."

Lucius was frozen in place. He was  _too_  still, and Ivy could feel the panic rising in him. She slid her hands up his arm to his chest, and put her face in his neck. "When you were injured, I told papa that if you died, everything in me would die with you. That is even more true now, husband. I will go no further than the edge of the woods. Kevin has stated he will go no further. You and Papa will return to us both; and we will bring you home."

"No further than the woods." Lucius told her firmly.

"I promise." Ivy agreed. "The eyewitness testimony of the blind is not so valuable as to take the risk."

"You promise, but I know you; you can be as contrary as your whims wish you to be."

"I am a woman, it's to be expected." Ivy said primly. "Pack for cold weather. It may be summer, but The Woods are colder beneath the trees. Take brushes for your boots; the mud is sticky and cold."

"Kevin says to leave the Good Color Cloaks behind."

Ivy scoffed. "The word is 'yellow'." She scorned. "And he is right. Papa confessed that the cloak was made that color so that if anyone dared cross the boundary into the woods, the Elders might have no trouble seeing them. Those cloaks are made to be visible, and for this we are to be hidden."

* * *

Alice Hunt knocked on the door to the Walker family home, and Edward opened the door for her. "Alice." He said in surprise.

Alice licked her lips and held out a bedroll, tied with strong cord. "I... It was suggested that you might need a warmer bedroll than the one you have used when it was your turn to patrol the woods."

Edward took the warmer bedroll carefully. "Thank you. It... I..." Edward glanced around awkwardly. "Tabitha is not home."

Alice flushed, just a little. "I know." She confessed, almost silent. "I would not have come if she were."

Edward blinked. "Oh." They held that position for an endless beat... and then he stepped aside to invite her in.

The second the door closed behind her, she rounded on him. "Edward, why are you doing this? You have a wife and daughters to care for! You have a whole Village to lead, and now that Kevin has unraveled the whole experiment..."

"I know. I am leaving you to face many angry questions without me." Edward admitted. "I am sorry for that. But I have to go."

"Why you?" Alice demanded. "I would go in your place. He's my son."

Edward looked down. "When August's youngest son died, Lucius wanted to leave, and go fetch medicines. You and I know that the boy could have been saved with something as simple as a flu shot; and God only knows what the Towns may have developed in the last thirty years to make even that obsolete." He gave Alice a pained look. "August didn't even ask. He could have slipped out of the village through our tunnels, been gone two days, and bought a vaccine kit. August was in on the secret. He could have saved his own son, and he didn't even ask to do it."

Alice looked down. "When Lucius was stabbed, neither did I."

"Every time Kitty trembled at the noise-makers hanging in the trees, every time cold and flu season sweeps through the classroom and their parents looked terrified... It's all on my head, Alice."

"Our heads." Alice corrected him. "We all took the same vows."

"And I was the one that wrote those vows." Edward shot back. "When Ivy left, I reminded the others that if there was to be a future for our way of life, it had to come from our children. Keeping the secret forever was never an option. And now that choice has been made for us by fate. I told them that if we didn't let her go, we could never call ourselves innocent; but that moment long since passed for us. I would rather it not pass for Ivy or Lucius."

"That's why you're doing this?" Alice demanded. "To convince her that you were right?"

"Maybe... To just convince my children that I was not so evil as they think me to be." Edward admitted with deep sadness.

Silence.

"Edward..." Alice asked him finally. "If you had a chance to do it over again, would you have started this?"

Long silence.

"I don't know." Edward confessed.

Long, long silence.

Alice reached out and pointedly put her hand in his, threading her fingers between his own. Edward shuddered hard at the simple contact, and Alice felt a thrill go through her at the strength of his reaction.

"If Kevin is right, there may be nothing to go back to, after all." Alice said softly. "Do right by your family, and come back to us."

_'Us.'_  Edward's mind caught the key word.  _Not 'come back to them', but rather 'come back to us'._

In preparation for coming to Covington, they had all spent many months retraining their speech to match a more antique way of life. There were very few conversations left between the Elders, where words were not chosen with the greatest of care.

Edward licked his lips. "Alice, I..."

The front door opened, and Tabitha walked into the house. Alice dropped his fingers instantly, and the two of them, already at a respectful distance, stepped back further automatically.

* * *

The Red Weed had covered over the fields and fences of the village. It had almost reached the buildings.

Kevin had almost attacked anyone who lit a bonfire to burn it, warning that the smoke was far too visible during the day, and an outdoor flame was far too visible at night, but the work crews lit a fire anyway; more afraid of the bright red plant than than they were of Kevin's mysterious invaders. Teams wrapped in yellow cloaks were madly tearing up the Weed.

The Elders were trying to calm things down, but they had to go door to door to do it, as the townsfolk that weren't tearing up and burning the Weed were already cowering in their homes.

Ivy had told Kevin the meaning of 'The Bad Color' and the outsider had found it grimly amusing. Ivy found that she agreed with him, when he expressed his disdain for their panic. The village folk were so ingrained in their superstitions that even knowing the truth of them wasn't enough. Kevin had remained at the Resting Rock. Close enough to the woods that a hiding place was nearby, and far enough away from the smoke that it didn't seem so obvious.

There had been some debate as to what to do with his gun, but he assured them that there were only two shots left, and that he would not release it to anyone. It seemed more like a threat than a reassurance.

Kevin was looking up at the sky. "Well, at least it's windy today."

Ivy glanced over. "Oh?"

"The wind. It'll disperse the smoke from your bonfire. With so much haze about from the war, with luck it'll blend in."

"Hazy skies." Ivy mused. "That's why it's getting cooler, even at this time of year. A thick haze is close enough to cloud cover."

"Cooler is bad." Kevin nodded. "Means your town will be more likely to light fires in their homes. Sooner or later, it'll get noticed."

_He is afraid of the visibility and clings to his gun. We are afraid of the Weed and cling to the cloaks._  Ivy thought to herself. _We have our talismans for and against evil, and he has his._

"I hate this." Ivy growled with surprising anger. "For over a year, I have agonized over what the truth coming out would do to us, and now that it has, nobody seems to care, for other frightening things going on."

Kevin actually smiled at that. "I know what you mean. The day before 9/11, I had a huge fight with my dad. The kind that would end a family. Then the next day it happened, and suddenly a grudge that seemed so... massive? It didn't mean nothing."

Ivy heard the meaning of the words, but didn't understand all of them. "What's nine eleven?"

Pause.

"Oh, wow." Kevin sighed. "There are times I wonder if your father wasn't right, after all."

Ivy chewed her lip. "Lucius is already packed. It will take my father another hour or so to prepare. Would you help me with something?"

"Sure."

* * *

They went to the Old Locked Shed first. Then the Quiet Room, then the hidden panels behind the Town Hall, then the hidden compartment beneath the Blacksmith. Between the two of them, they had half a dozen costumes. Claws and teeth and spines and red cloaks. The two of them dragged the costumes into the middle of Town Square.

Ivy produced the whistle and held it out to him. "Yours, I believe."

Kevin smirked and blew the whistle loudly. Three quick blasts. Ivy didn't know it, but he immediately scanned the tree line, waiting to see if the noise drew anything.

But the sound only drew people to their doors, and gained the attention of the work crews. The whole village stared in open disbelief at the costumes, once so frightening, and now so... obviously fake.

Kevin whispered to Ivy that she had their full attention, and the young woman picked up a piece of one costume. It was the glove. A large, clawed hand.

As everyone held their breath, Ivy hurled the fake paw onto the bonfire. Then she reached down and plucked up another piece. It was the long red cloak, spines and all. She threw it on the fire too.

Before the eyes of all of them, Ivy Walker-Hunt burned their monsters away to nothing.

* * *

Kevin, Lucius and Edward strode into the woods with surprisingly little fanfare. Tabitha watched them go, so did Alice, so did Ivy.

They didn't speak for most of the walk. Kevin rarely walked in a straight line, and his eyes were constantly moving. The Red Weed made the going slow. After twenty minutes, Kevin glanced about and seemed to recognize the spot. Without a word, he went digging under the Weed for a moment, and pulled up a wooden latch.

Lucius looked the question to Edward, who sighed. "We hid some of our suits around the Woods, just in case."

Kevin pulled out the red cloak, and discarded the rest to the monster costume. The red cloak alone was large enough to cover much of their guide, and against the Red Weed, he was surprisingly hard to spot.

"Camouflage." Kevin said simply. He gestured at the other costume in the hidden pit, as if inviting them to take it. Lucius recoiled from it instantly, and Edward shook his head lightly. Kevin didn't fight them on it.

They kept walking for the rest of the day. As the sun set, they formed a small camp. Kevin stopped them from lighting a fire, and they huddled in their bedrolls for warmth.

"I'll take the first watch." Kevin sighed. "Remind me again, how did you people talk me into this?"

Edward smirked. "I forgot how intimidating the Deeps Woods were." Edward agreed. "I feel like something is following us every second."

"Something has been following us ever since we left the village." Kevin said simply. "I think it's Ivy."

Edward almost didn't follow it for a moment, but when it sank in, his jaw dropped. "What?!"

Kevin raised his voice a little. "I know it's you, Mrs Hunt." He called into the dark. "Nobody else in the village had the nerve to see us off, let alone follow us."

Ivy came strolling up out of the darkness, dressed in a pair of Lucius' trousers, and a red cloak of her own. "You have good ears, Kevin."

"I didn't used to. A week ago it was easy to sneak up on me." Kevin snorted. "You kept that cloak from our little 'witch-burning' in town?"

Ivy nodded and sat down alongside her husband. "Father, before you say it-"

"Ivy, this is madness." Edward sounded more tired than angry. "But I suppose it's the same madness that drove you to it the first time: A wish to save Lucius from harm."

Ivy nodded. "Yes." She nodded. "That, and I wanted an excuse to wear trousers for once."

Kevin found that hilarious.

Edward looked sick. "I suppose that if we tried to turn back, it would take another day just to drag you back to the village, and then another day to get back to here; and there'd be little to stop you from following us again."

Ivy shrugged her own pack off her shoulders. "Yes." She turned toward Kevin. "I'll take the second watch. Darkness doesn't affect me."

* * *

They slept in turns, and when the sun rose, they walked again.

Kevin walked ahead of them. He never came within twenty feet of them.

"Kevin's stride has an oddness to it." Ivy said quietly. "He could hear me, but I am having trouble following him."

Lucius slipped back next to them. "He doesn't walk in a straight line." The younger man whispered. "He walks carefully away from the leaves, twigs and pine needles. He walks only on the Weed, and on stones. When he can't find one, he slows down. He's being careful not to make a sound."

Edward nodded. "He is afraid of being noticed. It's much the same way a prey animal is around predators."

Lucius looked around. "There are no predators."

Kevin was ten feet ahead of them, and they had spoken in whispers, but he heard them. "Yes. There are."

The Red Weed slowed them down, enough that Ivy was losing her place. They followed the route that she had taken on her first trip out, until they found the pit.

Lucius was striding ahead of her, and she paused as her fingers touched a knotty, twisted tree, fallen long ago. Her fingers traced the shape and she shouted. "Lucius! Stop!"

Her husband froze.

Ivy raised a hand and pointed to the ground just ahead of him. Lucius crouched and felt around. "She is right. The Red Weed covers it almost completely, but the ground falls away here."

"How did you know?" Kevin asked her, curious.

Ivy was still. "This is where it happened."

Lucius looked back at the pit. "Noah?"

Ivy nodded. "Is he still..."

Edward answered that one. "No. We sent his parents out to collect him with Victor. It was not unusual for them to remain secluded after Noah's attack on Lucius, so nobody knew they were gone. We brought him out of the pit and gave him a proper burial."

Kevin was looking around. "Oh. I know this place too." He sighed. "This was where I found out about your monsters. We all heard the roaring noises coming out of the woods, but we were told they were the animals that the Preserve was there to protect. When I came in the third time, I found the pit, and the costume." He gazed out over the Red Weed. "It looked a lot different here, then."

"You left the suit?" Ivy asked her father.

Edward nodded. "It felt terribly wrong to just... wash it out and start using it again."

Ivy snorted. "How very ethical of you."

* * *

They walked again, and rested for a meal. Kevin still forbade the use of a campfire, and they ate their dried fruits quietly. The closer they got to the edge of the Woods, the more tense Kevin got.

"I saw the costumes." Kevin said softly, after an endless silence. "When I was leaving the care packages, I saw two of those monster-suits, and then I understood how you did it. How you could keep people in for so long. Fear." He sent Edward a look. "That was your idea, wasn't it?"

"Mine, among others. Lucius was the eldest of the children at the time, and he was fearless." Edward confessed. "And like all secrets long kept, we could not admit to it once he grew old enough to understand."

Kevin nodded. "When i was a little boy, I believed in monsters. Every night, I thought there was one in my closet. It took my mother months to convince me that there was no such thing." he looked to Edward. "Your whole village is full of children that are told that there are such things as monsters. I can't imagine my mom telling me that I did have a reason to be scared."

Edward looked ancient. "I know. You must despise me very much."

"Despise you? Mister Walker... I wish my mom had raised me in your village."

Edward looked over sharply. "What is your meaning?"

Kevin looked like he wanted to cry, but had no tears left. "If I had grown up believing in scary monsters... maybe I would have been ready when they actually showed up. Instead, I froze. I had no idea there was anything to be so scared of, and when they came marching over the trees and houses, I froze." Kevin scrubbed his face. "If I had believed in monsters a week ago; I might have been able to pull those kids free in time."

They had no idea what he was talking about, and they didn't need to ask. Kevin's face had grown haunted. He had eyes that Edward recognized at once. he had seen them in the mirror when his brother had been killed. He had seen that look on the faces of every member of their Trauma Counseling group. It was a look that had seen pure darkness, and wondered at the point of surviving at all.

"The village children think that Those-We-Do-Not-Speak-Of are evil." Ivy sighed, giving up her pretense of sleep. "Papa tells them over and over that they are not evil, just hungry. The same can be said of birds by insects. I wonder if the creatures in the Tripods are just... hungry."

"Maybe." Kevin groaned at the thought. "I hope not. If they're here because they're desperate for something, then they'll never leave. You're not wrong though. We're insects to them. This isn't a war; it's an extermination."

Silence.

Lucius leaned closer to his wife and spoke in her ear, just between the two of them. "You believe in the Martians, then?"

"I do." Ivy said simply. Nothing more than that.

* * *

They slept for a while, and woke when the ground rumbled. Kevin was up instantly, completely feral. Ivy sat straight upright before her eyes were open. Lucius and Edward soon followed.

Kevin was still against a big, thick tree, huddling under his red cloak. Ivy's head titled as she listened. "It's moving."

"It's one of their big ones." Kevin whispered. "Lucius, Edward; front and center. This is what you're here for."

The two of them traded a look, and Lucius squeezed Ivy's hand. She understood, and stayed back in the trees.

The three men edged forward. The sound of the engines grew stronger. The ground shook with regular intervals.

Kevin stayed back and waved them forward. He didn't look scared; only still. The fear was still radiating off him, but it was as though he didn't care any more; too tired to work up a scream.

Edward and Lucius crept closer. There was a slight rise in the ground. Even without seeing it, the two of them dropped to the ground, crawling forward.

And there, between the trees, was a monster.

Flat against the ground, the two of them craned their necks back, and back, and back as the Tripod came into view. It was higher than the trees. It walked on three long, serpentine legs, topped by a raked vaguely circular head. The thing looked like a living monster, but it was unmistakably a machine. It had long, slender tentacles, which moved back and forth, performing tasks.

But what horrified the two men, were the cages. At the base of the head were two large round cages, full of people. Some of them were screaming or weeping; though they were inaudible over the constant engine sounds. As they watched; one of the Tripod tentacle arms reached into the cage, and pulled out a man, wrapping its grip around his torso, and lowering him to the ground.

A second sender limb lowered from the Tripod, toward the man, who started shrieking hysterically. Edward felt his eyes bug out of his head, and the second tentacle extended two needle-like fangs, and skewered the screaming man in the throat. The screams were cut mercifully short, and both Lucius and Edward had a clear view as he was sucked dry of blood in seconds. They could see it flowing up the tube.

The body was left where it was, and the Tripod kept moving, the chrome vampire tentacles already reaching back into the cage for another human victim. The whole thing had happened so fast that the monstrous thing hadn't even broken stride.

They both watched, horror growing, as the Tripod began to spray the Red Weed. Jets of fine red mist came gusting out from the Tripod, settling over the Weed, the way Farmers in Covington Wood scattered seeds.

The Tripod hadn't noticed them. It was moving along the edge of the woods, trees cracking and falling under its feet like dry grass. It was making its way in the opposite direction.

Even after it was out of sight, beyond the trees, neither of them could move. They were both as pale as death, eyes wide. As the sounds of industry faded, Lucius was aware of a low sobbing, and realized it was coming from him.

It wasn't just the horrific nature of what they had seen. It was like the Tripod had painted something dark across their souls. There was a natural sense of utter  _wrongness_  about it, an uncleanness that belonged to something... unearthly.

Very slowly, they rose to their feet, looking down the corridor that the Tripod had left in its wake. It was crawling with the Red Weed... and a steady trail of discarded bodies.

Edward started to say something... and promptly spun around to throw up. Lucius was dead silent, unable to speak, even if he wanted to.

They were both frozen, brain-locked. They stayed there, halfway between standing and kneeling, unable to think, unable to move.

After a very long time, Lucius felt a soft touch on his neck, and he let out a shriek. Ivy shrieked too, jumping back from her husband. She'd never known him to show fear of anything at all. "Lucius?"

He promptly passed out.

* * *

Lucius came to. It was dark. He was indoors again, though he didn't know where. The room was small, with the lights off and the windows broken. There was debris scattered all over the place, and the vague smell of rot.

Ivy was cradling his head in her lap. "Papa! He's awake!"

Edward came over, and Lucius tried to sit up. Ivy pushed him back down, and Edward waved him still. "Steady. You were out for a while."

Kevin was at the broken window, peeking outside. "Shock." He said without judgment. "It happens. Your brain basically overloaded and decided to shut down for a while."

Lucius licked his lips. "Where are we?"

"Ranger Station." Kevin reported. "There are over a dozen of them along the perimeter of the Preserve. Fortunately, we were close enough to carry you there."

It took a few seconds for Lucius to process this. "We're  _outside_  the woods?!"

"We are." Ivy said in a very small voice. "Further than either of us have ever been."

Lucius looked the question to Kevin, and the Ranger shrugged. "What did you want me to do? Leave her there? The Tripods have moved their operation since I was last here."

Edward put a hand up. "I told him to bring Ivy along. I dare-say that the route to the city is... not as I remember it." He turned his gaze to Kevin. "I owe you an apology. I never should have asked you to come back. Until I saw the Tripod, I had no idea what I was asking of you."

Kevin shrugged. He wasn't happy about it either, but he wasn't going to waste air complaining. "Well, waiting at the trees isn't an option any more. And if you don't come back, I don't know how long I should wait. Ivy?"

"I agree." She said softly. "Going back through the woods seems... more dangerous than usual. We'll have to come with you, all the way."


	3. The City of Brotherly Love

They rested in what was left of the ranger station, letting time pass. Kevin wasn't sure how well the Martians could see in the dark; but wanted to wait for nightfall.

"You need light to travel when you're picking through the woods. For travel over roads, wait for dark. At least, when you're on foot. There are people on the move everywhere now."

"Dangerous people?" Ivy guessed.

Kevin snorted. "There ain't no other kind anymore."

Time seemed to crawl. Kevin and Edward had a long conversation, with Kevin filling in the blanks that thirty years absence had caused.

Ivy took the opportunity to speak with her husband. "I've never seen you scared before." She commented. "Was it really so terrible?"

Lucius shivered. "Yes."

Ivy cupped his face. "Tell me?" She asked plaintively. Her husband was her eyes. It wasn't the first time she had asked him to describe something. In fact, a lot of her happiest memories were Lucius drawing the world for her. This was not to be one of those happy times.

"I don't know what to tell you, Ivy. It was a monster. They pluck up people, suck them dry, water the poison weed in human blood, and then toss away the bodies." He shivered. "I never believed in evil before."

"Kevin called it an Extermination. Maybe that's all Evil is; viewing people as vermin to be wiped out."

The two of them considered that a while, not liking the implications; when they became aware of a clicking noise. Kevin was still at the window, keeping watch. In the next room, Edward was working a device that neither of them knew. "Papa?"

"It's a radio." Edward explained. "It's a machine that lets you speak to people far away."

"Don't transmit!" Kevin warned.

"I know." Edward called back. "I understand the dangers of signals going back and forth. I just wanted to see if there was anyone out there trying to make contact."

"There wasn't five days ago." Kevin told him.

Lucius noticed something, and picked it up. "What is this? It is not like any book I have seen before."

Kevin looked. "It's a newspaper. Local and world news, delivered every day." He gave Lucius a tight smile. "Probably the last newspaper that ever got printed."

"What does it say?" Ivy asked, curious.

Lucius read out the headline. "Katrina hits Gulf. Thousands flee as New Orleans Floods."

Kevin sighed. "Wonder how they're going now?"

"Ivy..." Lucius said quietly. "This newspaper has a date written in the corner. It says the year is 2005."

Dead silence.

Ivy whirled on her father. "Every time I think I've uncovered your every lie, I find an even worse one waiting to surprise me."

"Don't knock it, Ivy." Kevin put in. "The turn-of-the-century world your father built? Assuming they never get found, places that know how to grow their own food and churn their own butter? They're the only hope of the human race. Everything else has been blown to hell. We built a system so modern and elegant that none of us knew how it worked, and it took less than three days for us to realize that without the lights and water always working, we didn't know anything. Four days to go from civilized people to mad barbarians."

Ivy was still glaring at her father.

"It's getting dark." Lucius offered.

Kevin nodded. "We should get moving once it's full dark. Get some rest; we'll be walking all night."

* * *

Lucius took the first watch, and everyone slept. Not long, just an hour or two. Kevin woke up a bit earlier, and returned to the radio. There was still no sign of anyone transmitting.

"Papa says that the machine lets you talk to people from far away." Ivy said quietly, and Kevin glanced over to see her and her husband were awake. "Is anyone saying anything?"

"Not that I can hear, but I can only pick up transmitters from a few states away."

"How far is that?"

"A few hundred miles; maybe five hundred if conditions are right." Kevin waved it off.

Lucius couldn't help the smirk. "A few hundred miles? Is that all? Kevin, none of us have ever been more than ten miles from anything."

Kevin snorted, accepting the fact. He glanced over his shoulder and noted that they had been careful not to wake Edward. "Ask me your question." He said softly.

Lucius and Ivy both twitched. "I don't know what you refer to." Ivy said guardedly.

"Yes, you do." Kevin said softly. "I don't claim to know a lot about your village, Ivy. But before we left, you stuck to me like glue, and I do know that in the 1890's, it wasn't kosher for a married woman to spend so much time with a virtual stranger. Lucius hasn't commented, because he feels indebted for saving both your lives. Edward hasn't commented because he's afraid of the reason. He thinks you might be planning to stay, once we get somewhere worth staying." He met their gaze. "I'm thinking it's something else. Why don't you ask me the question?"

Ivy shivered. "I vowed, long ago... never to feel sorry for myself. But even so..." She rubbed her face. "Kevin, is there knowledge in the Towns that can give me back my eyes?"

Kevin shuddered. "I... It's just..."

Ivy reached out and felt for his hands, holding his fingers in her own. "I can handle it."

Kevin sighed. "It depends on why you lost your sight. Progressive Myopia and Cataracts can be reversed. It's called Laser Surgery. It can be done... at least, it could a week ago. Now, I'm not so sure. I find it hard to believe there's a Laser Clinic working anywhere for a thousand miles at least. The Martians didn't just take our homes; they switched off the whole world."

Ivy crumpled, falling back into herself a little. "I had feared that was the case." She said softly.

Lucius looked ready to cry. "If I had just... Gone anyway. I never should have asked permission; I should have just gone. A year ago, I would have discovered the truth and you would have a full year to see their doctors."

"And you would never have gone back; and you would have been in the city when it all burned down." Kevin countered. "I've done the same thing, Lucius. Going over and over and over my life, looking for the one small choice I should have made differently. Trust me, it doesn't work."

Lucius looked... harder. "Kevin, there's no help coming, is there? Edward insists that he can get food to Covington, and put everything back the way it was, but he's wrong, isn't he?"

"Yes." Kevin said simply.

Ivy's head tilted a bit as she aimed her ears at her father's sleeping form. "I wonder if I shouldn't tell him."

"Ivy, why do you think he was okay with you coming along?" Kevin told her dryly. "He could have snuck you back across the treeline and sent you home. He could have tied you to your own bed. It would have taken a day. He wanted you out here. I've seen the paperwork. I found it when I was researching the woods. He put over a dozen names on that trust fund. He could have sent anyone to come back with me. He came back himself because he needs to find out if there is a way to fix you. That's why he's so sure he can still finish the job. He has to find something to make you better."

Ivy listened to her father's breathing again, feeling like a child. "I'm not broken. I'm just different. That's not a terrible sin, is it?"

Kevin nodded. "No.." He lay back on his bedroll; ending the conversation.

"I think..." Lucius said softly to Ivy. "I think that he knows you haven't forgiven him. I think he wants to find a way he can fix all the harm he's done."

Ivy sighed. "I don't want him to try and  _buy_ my forgiveness."

"No. Not yours." Lucius whispered, kissing his bride's unseeing eyes. "He hasn't forgiven himself. If he can save the entire village, he can forgive himself for the ones he didn't save."

The Tripod Call sounded over the woods, though from a distance. Edward was awake instantly.

"Time to go." Kevin declared.

* * *

They walked again. When they reached the road, both Ivy and Lucius were quite taken with it. Neither of them had ever walked on a paved road before. Even with the damage, and the Red Weed, it was quite a luxury for them.

They walked all night. There was no sign of anything alive. The trees were all wrapped in Red Weed, and the leaves were falling dead to the ground; though it was summer. They sky was gray, and filled with the haze of a million fires, burning unchecked. The only living thing that they could see or hear was the Red Weed, giving the world a nightmarish quality.

There was a feeling of everything dying, everywhere they looked.

Ivy shivered. Her footsteps were fearless, given that she couldn't see the ground, but Lucius knew her stride better than he knew his own and they were soon walking faster than Kevin and Edward.

Ivy felt the ground beneath her feet. "The Red Weed is thinner here."

"Another half mile, and it will be gone completely." Kevin reported. "At least, it was the last time I went through here. The radio suggested they were terraforming. Making our world into someplace they can live more comfortably."

"It feels like the whole world is covered over." Edward sighed. "I haven't seen a single living thing in over two hours."

"Look up." Kevin told him without looking.

Edward did so. The haze made it hard to see, but the sky was full of crows. The carrion eaters lived off death and decay; so it made sense that they would be there in huge numbers.

They had left the preserve behind. The Woods were far away, leaving them alone in the dead land. Just them and the crows, looking over a blood-soaked wasteland.

* * *

Kevin was wrong. It took over three miles for the Weed to fade away. Its reach had extended a good long way; but eventually it faded. The sky was still oppressive, and the animals were still dead silent, but they could see grass again, and the smell of drying blood was gone from the air. Everyone was glad for it, but still unnerved.

"There is a building ahead." Lucius reported.

"What is it?" Ivy asked.

"It's a Diner." Edward said, almost laughing. "I can't believe it's still here. When we made our way into the Woods for the last time, I stopped here on the way; and I ordered a cheeseburger. Burger, Fries, Coke. When the check came, I handed the waitress everything I had in my wallet. I knew I wouldn't need money where I was going. She couldn't believe how much I gave her as a gift." His smile faded a little, as they arrived at the broken, burned out wreck. "She gave me a jelly donut, free; to take with me." He sniffed. "They made pastry with cream and jam in the middle. I haven't had anything like that in decades."

"I doubt you'll find one here." Kevin commented, looking at the parking lot. There were a few cars parked. "The first thing that the Martians did was knock out the power. That includes the cars. He reached into his bag and pulled out something Lucius didn't recognize. "The cars all got knocked out the same way; so I know which part to replace. I cleaned out a Garage, got a few spares. I can get one of these cars running, if I can find some tools."

"We'll go inside, see if there's any food left." Lucius offered.

Kevin nodded, heading to the cars. "I come here for breakfast every morning, on my way to work... Of course, I had a car then."

The other three headed into what was left of the building.

"A car will make the ride easier?" Lucius asked, having never seen one before."

"Faster, if nothing else." Edward nodded. "They can travel many times faster than our legs. I've walked more today than I have in years." Edward admitted. "It's easy to forget how...  _big_ the world can be; given how long it has been since we've ever looked further than a tree line."

They came into the Diner. The place was wrecked, but there were a few seats left. Lucius led Ivy over to a booth, and she slid into it, grateful to be off her feet. "Wait here." He whispered in her ear. "Rest. I'll see what's left."

Ivy nodded and Lucius and Edward went behind the counter, into the kitchen. Lucius had never seen stainless steel before. They checked every cabinet. They were empty. They checked the freezers and refrigerators. The food within had spoiled. Edward found a stack of newspapers in the recycling bin and put a few of them in his bag.

And then, under the counter, Edward found a sleeping bag, and an empty water bottle. "Someone's here!"

* * *

They both rushed back into the Diner, and found Ivy, with a knife to her throat. She was being held by an old woman; who was carrying a bag full of food cans and moldy rolls on her back. She had a knife in each hand, and madness in her eyes.

Edward tried first, stepping forward with his hands up. "Please, be calm. We don't want anyone to get hurt. We didn't know this spot was taken."

"These are my cans!" The old woman yelled, waving the knife. "Stay back!"

They both backed away, holding their hands up. Ivy whimpered a little, trying to hold the knife a little bit away from her neck.

"These are my cans! My food! Mine!"

"We don't want them." Edward promised.

"Yes, you do! Yes, you do! You can't have the food!" The woman raged. "Now... I want your food. All of it! Slowly!"

Both men took their packs off carefully and set them down.

"Now go away!" She yelled.

"We will, just give me back my wife." Lucius promised.

"You'll bring more people!" She shouted. "The girl stays with me! You'll bring more people and take my cans! These are mine! MINE!"

Lucius and Edward glanced at each other, afraid to make a move, when the old woman spun to the door. Kevin was framed in the doorway, holding a canteen in his hand.

The old woman tensed. "Kevin?"

Very slowly, non threatening, Kevin held the canteen out, away from himself.

The old woman was watching him like a hawk.

Kevin tipped the canteen, and water started trickling to the floor.

The old woman lurched forward a step, Ivy suddenly mattering less to her. What Kevin was offering was worth more than gold to her; certainly more than Ivy.

Kevin gave her a look; one ruthless survivor to another. "You first." He said calmly.

The old woman glanced over at Lucius and Edward, her crazed mind calculating something. "No."

Kevin didn't take his eyes off her. "Guys, take your packs and get to the truck. The black one. Climb in the back."

"What about Ivy?"

"Go, now." Kevin told them.

They obeyed, getting their things and heading out.

Once they were out of the room, Kevin acted. He tossed the canteen to the other end of the room. Water splashed out as it hit the floor, and the old woman cried out in panic, shoving Ivy away as she dove for the freshwater.

Kevin grabbed Ivy's arm and the two of them ran for the parking lot. The black truck was running, with Lucius in the passenger seat, and Edward behind the wheel. Kevin pulled Ivy toward the tray at the back, and the two of them climbed in.

Edward had pulled away from the Diner before the old woman could give chase.

Lucius slid open the window in the back of the cab and called back to them. "Ivy?"

"I'm alright." She promised him swiftly.

Kevin leaned forward. "Edward, are you okay to drive?"

"Just like riding a bike." Edward said tightly, gripping the wheel for dear life.

"You haven't seen a bike in thirty years either." Kevin pointed out.

* * *

Once they were clear of the Diner, they stopped the truck and rearranged themselves.

Ivy turned to Lucius as he got out of the truck, to ask him a question, but he had her wrapped up tightly in his arms before she could speak. "Are you alright?"

"I didn't hear her." Ivy commented in amazement. "She came right up behind me, and I didn't hear her coming." She gestured at Kevin. "Sometimes, I have trouble following him too. Kevin says that everyone who made it out of the cities did so by going unnoticed."

Edward turned to Kevin. "Kevin, you saved my son-in-law last year, and now my daughter. I fear I will never be able to properly repay this debt to you."

"You could give up this crazy mission and head for home right now?" Kevin suggested.

"That would save us, but at some point, the village will run out of food." Edward pointed out. "We still need to organize a food drop to see us through to the next season."

Kevin looked like he was going to argue the point for a moment, but simply shook his head and moved into the drivers seat. Edward went along.

Lucius drew a little closer to his wife once they were alone. "The further we go, the less hopeful I am of succeeding. That woman was ready to kill you over apple slices. If there's enough food out there..."

Ivy shivered. "It seems hopeless, but we're going anyway."

Lucius felt a wave of affection for his wife. How many people would have told her that it was hopeless when she made the journey to save him?

Edward leaned against the truck to speak with Kevin through the drivers side window. "That woman knew your name."

"She owned the Diner. I was a regular customer." Kevin nodded. "Listen, there aren't a lot of people who know how to fix an engine that they hit; so there's only a few cars left moving on the road; and everyone still alive is on the move. This car is going to make us a pretty big target."

Edward chewed his lip. "We'll drive as close as we dare. We'll hide the truck somewhere and head in on foot."

* * *

They drove for the better part of a day. Kevin had the driver's seat, with Ivy beside him. It was safer and more comfortable, and both Edward and Lucius insisted she take it.

"You made this trip every day for work?" Ivy commented after a while. "As far as I can tell, we've been going in a straight line, and faster than I can comprehend."

Kevin smirked, just a little, and pressed down on the accelerator. Ivy squeaked and grabbed for her seatbelt, more exhilarated than scared.

"We passed my home half an hour ago." Kevin reported. "We're not going to my place; we're heading into Philly."

"You don't want to stop at your home first?" Ivy asked. "None of us would mind."

Kevin smiled a little, truly envying her. She couldn't see that every single building had been leveled.

* * *

Edward and Lucius, riding along in the back, were staring numbly out at the world they drove through.

Kevin was taking the highway, bypassing the worst of it. Someone had come along with a bulldozer and forced the roads clear, but the highway was lined with the wrecks of ruined or abandoned cars. Many of them had bodies still in them. Almost all of them had been picked clean by looters.

And now and then, they could see the houses. What was left of them, at least. The fires had long since burned to ash, but the wreckage went everywhere. It was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. It was as if some great force had come along and scooped up the entire world, tossing it about for amusement.

There were bodies all over the place, and the unsettling sight of empty clothes, washed in dust; laying everywhere across the wreckage. In the distance, there were towers; and Lucius could tell that there should be many more of them. What few there were left had all been torn to ruins. One of them had been carved right down the middle; the two halves hanging open in opposite directions.

"Are these the Towns?" Lucius asked, his voice low with horror.

"No." Edward whispered back. "This is what's called 'suburbs.' It's an area near the city; and most people live here. It's close enough to the city for work, far enough that it doesn't get too crowded."

Lucius drew the houses in his mind by counting the driveways. "Too crowded? There are more homes in this small area than the entire Village. And most of them are...  _were_ , bigger than the Town Hall."

Edward shivered. "Not any more." He called through to the driver's seat. "Kevin? We're not stopping here, surely?"

"No." Kevin called back. "Philly is where the Tripod landed. They didn't stay, but obviously they didn't leave much behind. They headed for Washington; but the last I heard, they had pretty much ignored Baltimore. We're headed there."

Lucius had no idea what these places were, but he couldn't deny he was glad to hear that they wouldn't be staying here.

The entire city of Philadelphia had been completely obliterated.

* * *

They drove a while longer. Every building they came across was empty or burned. There were some cars stopped on the road. Some of them were empty. Others had bulletholes in them. The Red Weed came and went; not as thick here, but still everywhere. They dozed. Edward took the wheel for a while and gave Kevin a break...

Ivy, in the passenger seat, woke up sharply and grabbed for her father. "Papa! Stop!"

Edward slammed on the brakes, startled. Lucius and Kevin were thrown hard against the rear of the cab. "Ow!"

Ivy gestured wildly. "Martians!"

Nobody asked how she knew. But they obeyed, too scared to do less.

Kevin had already grabbed their Red Cloaks. "I can see Red Weed over that way."

They left the truck on the road, door open, engine off. It actually fit right in with all the other abandoned cars. The three of them ran to the side of the road, and then to the Red Weed. Huddling under their cloaks, they pressed the deep red fabric into the deep red plants, nearly invisible.

"Ivy?" Lucius whispered the question.

"I can see their color." Ivy whispered. "They are coming closer, from that direction."

"I don't see them." Kevin hissed. "We should at least hear them by now."

"Not the Tripods, the Martians." Ivy hissed again, and they all went quiet at the sight of movement through the strangled trees.

Sure enough, a Trio of Aliens were walking about. Not the Tripods, the aliens themselves. For a moment, Lucius had to remind himself to breathe. His brain had locked up completely at the sight of the Tripods, but these were something else. The Great Martian War Machines were too big for the human mind to comprehend. The pilots were so terrifyingly... real.

They had three limbs. Two arms, and one leg in the centre of their bodies; and they clambered around on the three limbs the same way their Tripods did. Each limb had three long fingers on it. Their skin was leathery grey, and their heads were large and flared like a shell. With jet black eyes, and a small mouth full of fangs; they were a very menacing sight.

Edward was giving low hissing breaths, like he was trying to sob with horror but couldn't quite get the sound past his paralysed throat.

What the three of them were doing, the humans couldn't tell. They were clambering over the Red Weed, looking under it here and there. They were exploring the ground. Kevin dared to lift his head enough to look and saw that they had devices with them; small devices that fit against the palms of their hands.

They were checking the ground, examining the Red Weed, when one of them stopped... and looked toward the humans. It trilled a cry to the other two. "Ulla!"

The Martians were immediately on alert, creeping toward the cowering humans.

Edward fought to stay silent. Creatures from another world were creeping up on him, and he was hidden behind nothing but a strip of red fabric...

The Martians were getting closer now, close enough that the cloaks would surely not hide them...

There was a sudden eruption of movement as Kevin lurched upright, gun drawn. He fired once, knocking down the closest Martian, then again, knocking down the second. Ivy let out a shout at the sudden gunshots.

The third Martian let out a sharp trill of horror, trying to jerk back. Kevin fired his gun again, and it clicked empty. The Martian spun around, trying to run away, and Kevin lunged at it. Lucius was up quickly, running forward to help. Lucius had never even seen a fight, except for wrestling matches between the boys in the Village. But the blacksmith was strong and adrenaline made him stronger.

Kevin got a grip around one of the creature's limbs, and Lucius got the other. The Martian was incredibly light, and they had no trouble wrestling it to the ground. Its third limb was trying to get a grip on the Red Weed, but couldn't get enough traction to escape.

"What do we do with... him?" Edward demanded. "Her? It?"

"We can't take it with us!" Kevin snapped. "It's not safe!"

"ULLA!" The Martian was screeching, thrashing in their grip. "ULLA!"

"We could take it as far as Baltimore!" Edward countered. "If there are soldiers there, they would probably welcome a prisoner."

"ULLA! ULLA!"

"We don't know how they communicate!" Kevin shouted over it. "It could have a tracking device. It could be  _telepathic_. It could be calling Tripods in right now!"

Ivy suddenly lunged forward with a rock in her hand, and smacked the Alien across the face. It dropped, instantly silent.

The three men stared at Ivy in surprise. The blind woman sniffed, blinking back tears. "Leave it here." She said finally. "By the time it wakes up, let's be far away from this place."

"You could have killed it!" Lucius hissed.

Kevin made a scoffing noise. "Jeez, you people." He scorned. "A baby mouse doesn't worry about the safety of the hawk. You're not stupider than a baby mouse, are you?"

Ivy ignored Kevin. "Lucius..." She whispered. "I can still see its color. And if I  _had_  killed it... I've killed monsters before. You haven't."

Neither her husband or father knew what to say to that.

Kevin checked his gun. "I'm out of ammo. We have to move, right now."

"Back to the truck." Edward directed, and everyone hurried.

Kevin stayed behind and picked up the rock. He looked to make sure they were far enough away, and bashed the Martian a few more times, until it stopped breathing.

Ivy didn't say anything when he came back to the truck, but he knew she had heard him. She knew what he did.

* * *

They drove again, scanning constantly for Tripods, and didn't see any. Kevin and Lucius were in the front, Ivy and her father in the back. After a while, they escaped the reach of the Red Weed, and were back on human roads.

"What are you thinking, Papa?" Ivy asked, calling over the engine.

"They're real." Edward commented. "They actually exist. They aren't just machines, they're flesh and blood."

Ivy nodded. "I feel responsible. I was the one that had Kevin stop the truck."

"Ivy, if you hadn't warned us, we would have been spotted by that trio of monsters, and a Tripod would be on us by now." Edward told her firmly.

Ivy shivered. "I could see them."

Edward was stunned. "What?"

Ivy shivered harder. "I told you that some people, I could see the tiniest bit of color? Well... When you and Lucius went to look at the Tripod, I could see your color getting further away... And I could see a big splash of color from up above the trees. Kevin said it was the top of the Tripod. The Pilot. The Martian had it too. It was so... strong. Even here, I get just the tiniest hint from you. The Martian was like looking at a flare. When Kevin killed it, I saw its color go away. It happened with Lucius too, last year. It's the only thing I can see in the darkness... It was like watching the stars go out."

Edward had nothing to say to that, but he tried anyway. "I would have given anything to keep your stars from going out, Ivy."

Ivy withdrew into herself, huddling into her red cloak. "I know."

* * *

They were getting closer to Baltimore; and Kevin knew it when the roads became more crowded with abandoned cars. "From here, we walk." He told them, and parked the truck on the side of the road. "Everyone remember where we parked."

They walked again, picking their way around streets filled with motionless vehicles. The endless field of desolate machines set their nerves on edge, and none of them spoke for a while.

Nobody mentioned it for a time, but the constant cloud of dust and smoke was painting the still machines white, and as they walked, it slowly caked them too, covered in gentle layers upon layers of grey snow.

"So many cars." Edward said finally. "I don't remember there being this many."

Ivy shivered. "The air is colder here."

"It's the Haze." Kevin told her. "The air is thick with smoke and dust. The sun can't break through any more. The haze is heavier around populated areas."

"Dust?" Ivy rubbed her fingers through her hair, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "Is that what this is?"

Lucius snorted. "We've been breathing it since we left the village. Now that it's getting heavy again, it's starting to build up enough that we notice it."

"I remember before we left." Edward commented. "We were so sure a war was coming back then. We didn't know if the blast would reach us, but an endless winter..."

"Nukes didn't create the dust." Kevin told them.

"What did?" Edward asked with vague interest.

Kevin looked sick. "Trust me, you'd be happier not knowing." He spat thickly, spitting out the dust he was breathing. "Just keep moving."

Lucius looked around. "There's so much... clothing. Where did all the discarded clothes come from?"

"Keep. Walking." Kevin told them.

* * *

They walked for another hour, when the road suddenly cleared. All the cars and trucks had been shoved aside, and the dust had heavy tracks and treads drawn in it.

Kevin looked about carefully. "Someone got an earth-mover going. They got the roads clear."

They kept walking, and buildings became visible in the distance. There was smoke rising from various spot fires. The towers were dark, but untouched.

CRACK!

The ground in front of them splintered, and Kevin jumped aside like a cat, hands in the air. "DON'T SHOOT!" He yelled.

The trio from the Village jumped back, cowering closer together.

"State your intention!" A voice called over a megaphone, but they couldn't tell from where.

"Refugees!" Kevin shouted. "We're Civilians!"

Silence.

"Do you think they can hit us from here?" Edward whispered. "Should we make a run for it?"

"Edward, that was a warning shot." Kevin hissed. "They're being patient with us. Don't give them a reason."

"Does everyone get treated this way?" Lucius wondered with a sigh.

The megaphone called to them again. "Remain where you are! Keep your hands visible!"

The four of them obeyed. After a moment, a military jeep came driving up to them, and three soldiers jumped out, all armed, and wearing gray camouflage. "What's with the red cloaks?" One of them asked another.

"It keeps us hidden when passing through Red Weed." Kevin answered him. "Look, we don't want trouble. If you don't want us here, say the word and we'll turn around."

One of the soldiers stepped forward and saluted. "Captain Joseph Evans, US Marine Corp. Sorry about the 'warm' welcome; but we've had some trouble with bandits and marauders coming in to steal our food supply. They've tried coming two at a time to blow up the defensive line."

"We're not them." Edward offered.

Evans looked them over. "Weapons are not permitted in the Perimeter. Anyone armed?"

Kevin still had his hands up. "I have a 9mm in my waistband, but it's empty. Other than that, no."

Evans signaled his men. "Submit to search, and you will be taken inside to the refugee centre. You can get food and water there. Violence will be met with force. Inciting violence will be met with force. Hoarding and theft will be punished." He ordered. "You have a problem with any of that, turn around and start walking."

The four of them were searched. Ivy squawked as unfamiliar hands searched her thoroughly from head to toe. Lucius' jaw worked, but a sharp look from Edward made him settle. They all got the same treatment. Kevin's gun was confiscated.

The fence-line was covered in razor wire, and patrolled by men with rifles.

"You want to leave, you ask at the gate. If we are on alert, you will not be allowed outside the perimeter. If we are on alert, you remain where you are, or proceed to a shelter if one is close." Evans gave them the rules by rote, firing them quick and fast. "You try to cross the line without permission, you will be stopped with force. You get one warning, if you ignore it, your ass is grass. Do not make trouble in the food lines, do not make trouble for the soldiers. Questions should be directed to your section chief. Crimes against your person are to be reported to your section chief. If you get an instruction, obey it. Failure to comply will be met with force. Looters will be shot on sight. These are the rules. Obey them and you will be fed and protected. Disobey them, and you will be subject to the rules as I have laid them out. Is this understood?"

The three from Covington nodded, terrified, completely out of place. Kevin raised a hand. "Captain, is there any command structure left?"

Evans glared. "We are... seeking further orders from the Joint Chiefs. In the absence of further instructions, we have broad discretionary powers."

"What does that mean?" Ivy asked meekly.

"It means there's nobody telling them what to do, so they're in charge." Edward whispered.

Evans heard him anyway. "Hey, we've seen Mad Max too, stranger. We're not maniacs; we're just under the gun. You think you can find better, you're welcome to try elsewhere."

That effectively ended the conversation; as the four of them were drawn into the fortified town.


	4. Let's Go Home

The four of them were processed, and released into the Safe Zone. It was an area that covered most of Baltimore, with some of the outer streets razed to the ground, making it impossible to sneak in, or sneak away. Within the perimeter, the area was sealed off into sections, divided by barbed wire. When Lucius strained his eyes, he could make out large cannons and artillery out in the distance, beyond the city.

Within the city, the overriding thing was the crowd. It pressed on them, wherever they were going. Ivy was hanging onto her husband's arm tightly, if she lost her grip for just a moment, she would never find him again, and she knew it.

"New People Are Sector Five!" Someone hollered. "I don't care if you think you can find friends elsewhere, I don't care if you're trying to get to a specific place in town. Take that up with your Section Chief. MOVE YOUR ASSES!"

"Was coming here a mistake?" Ivy whispered.

"I'm not sure yet." Edward said quietly. "But if it was... we'll talk about the weather."

Ivy nodded.

Kevin leaned over next to Lucius. "What was that, about the weather?"

Lucius smiled softly. "Ivy's father effectively ran the village. He also organized most of the social functions, and taught at the school. Being his daughter, Ivy didn't want to be considered the... I don't know quite how to say it..."

"Teacher's Pet?" Kevin guessed.

"A feeling that only got worse when her sight failed her." Lucius nodded. "Ivy had a deal with her father, if he ever made it difficult, or if she needed help but didn't want to ask, she would talk about the weather. It's their little inside secret."

"Lot of secrets in your world." Kevin commented under his breath.

* * *

Their Section was not any better than the others. Almost a hundred people crammed in like sardines. Ivy was overloaded by the constant press of people, the stink of body odor from refugees, plus the smell of ozone and oil smoke that clung to anyone who'd walked through the destroyed places of the world.

Kevin found them a spot on the front steps of a library. The building was boarded up, which annoyed Lucius. He would have liked to explore such a place, but peeking through the boards, he could see the place had been torn apart and pillaged.

Ivy withdrew from the overload of her senses. She couldn't see the crowd of people, but everything else was punishing her with its oppressiveness. Everything felt wrong here. She could taste the despair.

Kevin collected their red cloaks and tried to string them up like tarps, putting a cloth barrier between them and the next group, settled against the wall just a few feet away.

"Red." Someone commented. "It looks like the goddam weed."

Kevin glanced to see who was speaking, but couldn't tell. There were about forty people in the direction he was looking, and all of them were aiming hateful glances at the cloaks.

"Bad color." Edward said with grim irony.

"Think it'd be any better if we were still wearing them?" Kevin asked logically.

Ivy squeezed her husband's hand. "Describe, please."

Lucius did so, acting as her eyes. "We are on a street, with a small plaza out front. I see a lot of that paved road, only some of it is colored grey where the people walk-"

"Concrete." Edward put in. "The word is concrete."

"Thank you. There is a great deal of concrete. And everywhere, there are people. There are soldiers in front of us, at the edge of the road. I assume they're soldiers, at least. They have guns and uniforms. Five of them, gathered around a long table; but they aren't doing anything. About forty feet away, I can see a large fence, but it looks recent."

"That's how they're splitting up the sections." Kevin reported. "It's to prevent riots breaking out."

"That seems foolish." Edward commented. "If the Tripods come here, nobody will be able to run more than forty feet."

Kevin snorted. "Edward, if the Tripods come here, running won't help for long."

"Why would they be worried about riots?" Ivy asked, her voice small. The place was scaring her.

As if to answer her question, a large truck rolled up, and everyone in their section jumped to their feet, suddenly charging toward the soldiers. Ivy yelled in sudden fear, expecting to be trampled, because she couldn't see they were running away from her.

"What is it?" Lucius asked in shock. People were clawing at each other, tearing each other out of the way, throwing random strangers to the ground in the dash to get closer.

At the truck, a soldier stepped off the back and started unloading a large pallet, covered in foil packages, stacked dozens high. They six stationed guards were forcing the crowds back as hard as they could.

The head soldier lifted his sidearm, and fired a shot in the air. Everyone yelled and dropped to the ground. Back at the closed down building, the team from Covington did the same.

With automatic weapons aimed at them, the crowd settled into something less frantic. They knew the routine, and settled into it eventually. A line formed, with the table at the head of it. The people lined up, and were issued one foil packet each. Whenever someone got one, they withdrew quickly, running to a private corner, paranoid eyes watching the crowd of people.

"What's happening?" Ivy mewled, shrinking against the wall.

"It's a food drop." Edward said in jaded awe. "I remember those. Just before we left, I saw footage of such things going on in the third world. People fighting like animals over bags of dry rice."

"Everywhere's the third world now." Kevin told him, sounding exhausted. "I've been telling you all week. None of those people will die if they miss a meal. In fact, the invasion is less than two weeks old. Most people in this country needed to skip a few dozen meals just to get back to healthy, but not a one of them have ever gone without food. Not for a day in their lives. Now they're willing to trade guns, knives, sex, clothing... This isn't starvation, it's fear." He sighed hard. "Because starvation comes later; and everyone knows it."

A commotion broke out at the table. "You've already got your ration!" The guard barked.

"It was stolen!" The man insisted. "It was taken straight out of my hand!"

"Did you report this?"

The man waved at the hundred rough people. "How?" He cried out helplessly. "Can you even tell us apart any more?"

The guards pushed him back. "If you can't prove it, we can't help you. You got your ration. Out of line."

The man was incensed. "I have to share this with my kid. You can't just-"

The gun came up. "Out. Of. Line."

Silence.

The man lunged for the table, and the pile of foil packets. He grabbed three of them and scooped them close to his body; running away as fast as he could.

BANG!

The man dropped as everyone screamed at the gunshot. Before his body even hit the ground, there were a dozen people fighting over the stolen packs he had dropped.

"How could anyone live this way?" Ivy asked with tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Living this way is easy." Kevin put in. "You throw the rulebook away, you can do anything."

"That doesn't make it right."

"Of course not." Kevin nodded. "But, the line between a regular person with a steady job and a guy willing to shoot a complete stranger for food? Not so long as you think."

"That I can vouch for." Edward put in. "I was a professor with good standing... and then my brother was murdered, and I was willing to become this person overnight. Each of the Elders has a terrible story, and we were all willing to be part of The Great Secret."

"Hiding from bad things? I can understand that." Ivy commented. "But I very nearly lost Lucius. Noah was unwell. I don't understand how someone could make that happen." She sniffed.

She could feel Kevin gazing at her. "And you, Ivy?" He challenged. "You were willing to kill a monster in self defense, not knowing it was Noah. If you had known, would you still have done it? If it meant saving yourself?"

"I don't know." Ivy admitted, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

"And if it meant saving Lucius? Would you have done it then, even knowing who it was?"

"Yes." Ivy admitted, then clapped a hand over her mouth, surprised at how fast she'd declared.

Kevin nodded, not surprised. "Could you kill a man to save your own life? Could you do it to feed your child, if he had food and you didn't? Could you leave a friend behind to be taken?" Kevin sighed, and reached out, squeezing Ivy's hand. "I don't mean to be cruel, Ivy. But these are questions that anyone alive has to ask now. How far are you willing to go to be the last one standing?"

"Are people really such... monsters?" Lucius murmured.

"That's an interesting question." Edward commented. "I spent thirty years trying to answer it. The only Monsters in the Woods were us."

"Not any more." Ivy, Kevin, and Lucius all said at once.

Long silence. The riot was being broken up swiftly, and the clamoring people were being put back into line.

"There's a Brokerage Firm around the corner. At least, there was thirty years ago." Edward commented. "I doubt there is any trading happening here, but I should be able to learn something about the state of my family assets. If I can find out where this food is coming from, I can arrange a food supply for Covington."

Kevin rolled his eyes.

Ivy spoke up. "I'm hungry. We still have our supplies?" She said it quietly. She had learned the value of keeping food a secret.

"We should find a place to eat. Somewhere nobody will see that we're not on the breadline." Edward said. "You do that, and I will attend to our business."

He headed off. Ivy raised a hand to Lucius' face. "Husband, would you go with him? I don't think it's wise to go alone."

"I'll go." Kevin volunteered.

"No, I want Lucius to go." Ivy said. "No offense intended to you, Kevin; but Lucius can cast a more imposing figure than you when you're not armed." She gazed in her husband's direction. "I'm safer here where the soldiers are than wherever father is going."

Lucius didn't want to leave her, but Edward was almost out of sight, and he hurried to catch up.

Kevin waited until he was out of sight. "So. What was that about?"

"I need to find someone, and I don't want to tell Lucius just yet." Ivy said, and shuffled to her feet. "This is a refugee camp. There must be a doctor about."

"Ivy, there is zero chance of having laser surgery here." Kevin said gently.

"Not that." Ivy told him. "Will you go with me?"

* * *

Edward had found what he was looking for in short order. Like everything else, the building was boarded up. A number of people were gathered around an unshaven man in a dark suit that was nearly white with all the ash and dust on it. He would have looked quite smart a few weeks before. Now he looked worse off than anyone else.

"Folks, can I have your attention!?" Someone shouted, and Lucius looked over as they walked. "We appreciate all the medical supplies you've donated; and we appreciate everyone who offered to donate some blood; but given the lack of electricity and refrigerator space, we don't have room for any more donations. Also, we have more bandages and gauze than we can store. What we need desperately are clean syringes, and disinfectants. Anyone who has those, can come straight to the head of the line. If you do have some of the excess, we suggest you trade it as soon as possible, so that other sections can make use of them."

The announcement made Lucius feel a little better about their chances. So far, the humans they had met on the road were feral animals. The idea that so many people were donating medicines that were clearly few and far between for the good of strangers was a heartening comfort.

Nobody bothered Lucius and Edward as they approached. One or two glanced at them with hungry eyes, and Lucius suddenly realized that they were better fed than most people here. Lucius noticed that the ladies were looking at him carefully. A little too carefully.

"Hey there."

Lucius turned and found an older man sidling up next to him, hand extended. "Clayton Forrester."

Lucius returned the handshake. "Lucius Hunt."

"Just wanted to warn you about something. You look fairly clean, and fairly fed, and that makes you a target. You shouldn't be so tidy. And... I'm sure you've noticed those young women staring at you. Some of them a little too old to be young, and some of them a little too young to stare back at, if you know what I'm saying."

"They are... relatives of yours?" Lucius stammered a bit.

Clayton laughed. "No, I'm not warning you away; it's just that you look fed, which means you have food to spare. Some of those girls over there have friends. Dangerous friends. She draws them in, and their friends collect the food, and somewhere in there you get your head bashed in. Just a friendly warning."

"Well... I just arrived." Lucius floundered. "I don't really have  _any_  rations of my own yet, and... Besides that, I'm happily married."

"Most of us are, but who knows where any of our wives are now?" Clayton smirked.

"Well, mine is in Section 5 with-"

"Wait! She's  _here_? And you left her  _alone_?!" Clayton was stunned.

"I did not." Lucius promised quickly. "She's with someone I trust."

"Trust? Right." Clayton drawled. "There ain't no friends in combat, pal. And even if this paragon of virtue you know  _is_  on the level, there are about a thousand guys in every section. Think he can handle them all?"

Suddenly nervous, Lucius scanned around for his father in law. Edward's conference was ending. And when he came back to Lucius, he looked positively ashen. Lucius said his goodbyes and headed off to fall into step behind his father in law. "Bad news?" Lucius guessed.

Edward barely heard him. He led the way back to the library, and paused when he reached it. The windows were boarded up here too, and Ivy and Kevin were on the opposite side of the large building.

Edward hesitated. "Lucius, would you be so good as to keep a weather eye out for observers?"

Lucius did so. "What am I watching for?"

 ** _Smash_**.

Lucius spun back and found that Edward was levering boards off one of the windows.

"Mister Walker, we were warned that looters would be  _shot_!" He hissed.

"I am aware, which is why I need you to watch for people with guns."

* * *

Ivy and Kevin had returned to their place before Edward and Lucius returned. They ate in turns. Kevin ate quickly and stood guard. Ivy ate while he kept watch over things. They were silent for a while.

"Are you going to tell Lucius what the doctor said?" Kevin asked quietly.

"I will." Ivy said quietly. "But I fear what his reaction will be."

"You could wait until we get back to the Village." Kevin offered.

"Assuming we make it back." Ivy said bitterly.

Kevin smirked. "I spoke with some of the nurses while you were with the doctor. They say nobody has a problem leaving. The soldiers are happy to see them go. Less people to fight over, less mouths to feed."

"If it's so easy to leave, then why do they stay?"

"You're kidding, right?" Kevin asked her seriously. "Ivy, this place is a hellhole, but there is food, there is protection, and we're a full step back from total anarchy. That's still better than anywhere else you'll find." He smirked a bit. "Well, anywhere not surrounded by haunted woodland."

Ivy was shaking. "I owe you an apology, Kevin." She said softly. "Covington is wrapped in secrets and lies and fear, but it's paradise compared to this. And if this is paradise compared to everywhere else..." She reached out and he caught her hand. "I hate that I asked you to come with us. I never should have put you through this."

Kevin didn't say anything for a long time. "I wish I could have spared you this whole trip. I barely put up a fight when you followed us into the woods."

"I wouldn't have listened." Ivy told him honestly.

"I've been doing it all week, playing the war over and over in my head. You know what I've learned? Figuring out who to blame is exhausting, and it doesn't work. All it does is make you crazy."

More gunshots rang out in the distance and Ivy shrank into herself a little again. "I wish I hadn't gone to the doctor. It's just another thing to be afraid of."

Kevin squeezed her hand. "I know."

* * *

Lucius rejoined them a few minutes later. "There are few people between the Sections. Those that are there are all going somewhere. He sent me back ahead of him."

Ivy nodded. She was folded in on herself, withdrawing from all the terrible sounds and smells.

Kevin asked the question. "How did it go?"

Lucius just looked at him. The look on his face was not encouraging. But his focus was on Ivy. She looked terrible. The hike through the woods hadn't touched her this way. The Refugee Camp was worse on her than any of them. He sat next to her, and she almost climbed into him. She pressed her face into him as tightly as she could; trying to drown out all the other smells and sounds around her. After a time, she settled, calming a bit.

"What are you thinking?" Lucius asked her.

"I'm wondering if the Towns were always like this, or if Extermination has made things this way." Ivy said quietly.

"We've always known there were bad people in the Towns." Lucius offered.

"We knew that because my father said so." Ivy sighed. "I see the world, Lucius, but not as you see it. If my father told me the sky had turned green, I would have to take it on faith that it was so, until I could ask you. And I cannot take anything from him on faith any longer." She settled tightly into him. "But he was right, wasn't he?"

"Speaking of The Wizard behind the curtain; here he comes." Kevin reported, waving Edward over.

Edward returned to them, crouching beside his daughter and her husband. "He was right. Kevin was right." He looked vaguely terrified. "The market has collapsed. They say it will never reopen."

"I tried to tell you." Kevin sighed.

"You did. I had no idea." Edward shook his head. "I've never felt so... foolish."

"What does that mean?" Lucius whispered. "The Market has collapsed? Surely there is another Marketplace."

Edward sighed. "You know little of Money, Lucius. You've never had need of it. But in many ways, it is the lifeblood of all civilization. Everyone needs and wants; and they work to provide for these needs and wants. But in the village we have this done directly. You work on a farm to provide food by growing it. Everywhere else, Money is used as an intermediary. You work at your job to get money, you use money to get food. As needs change and supplies change, the inherent value of all things changes from day to day."

"That seems... like an unnecessary step." Lucius commented.

"It's about competition." Kevin tried to explain. "If you can get what you need for a lower price, you have money left over as security. If you have need of an item you cannot create, like last year when you needed medicine, you have resources on standby when you're too sick to work for it."

"But with the War; it would appear that this is now no longer the case." Edward sighed. "The banks have all been ransacked; and with so much destruction, the change in the value of everything has... effectively eliminated money altogether." He waved back the way he came. "There is a group of men over there huddling around a fire barrel for warmth. They're tossing stacks of hundred dollar bills into the fire; just to keep warm."

"That's about all it's good for now." Kevin nodded.

Edward shivered. "I have never once lived without the protection of money. I was born in a wealthy home, and I never had to work for anything if I did not want to. My brother was killed over a debt of a thousand dollars, and his money all came to me. More than I would ever spend." He confessed. "I've spent thirty years without so much as seeing a dollar, but I knew, as certain as I knew the sun would rise, that the money in the family trust would protect the Woods, and the Village, and keep everything bad in the world from getting in." He shook his head, looking morose. "I am such a fool."

Gunshots rang out, a few streets away. They could hear the distant sound of screaming. Where they were, nobody flinched. Just another refugee trying to get more food, and paying the price.

"What do we do now?" Ivy asked. "If food is so scare here, and there is no money to bring in more, then our expedition has failed. We have no way to supply Covington Village."

Heavy silence.

"Covington Village may already be gone." Kevin said finally. "You all saw it. The Tripod was at the edge of the woods. None of us looked to see which way it went."

"East, I think." Ivy put in. "Along the road. But if it decided to head into the woods for any reason, it would have reached Covington long ago."

"Well, we can't stay here, surely." Edward scorned.

"Edward, where do you plan to go? This is the best that the world has to offer anyone." Kevin shot back. "There's nowhere in the world that's better off any more. Why do you think I didn't want to come back?"

"If we  _do_  go back to the Woods..." Lucius began, and then changed his mind. Finally, he spoke again. "No. Um... Look, if we go back, there might be many more people there. The woods provide, even with the Red Weed, there are berries, and animals, and birds. Enough that we might have refugees of our own coming in..."

"No." Kevin waved that off instantly. "There's no chance of that. People will go away from the Red Weed. Because where it grows... there's something growing it."

"Why would we not want to go back?" Edward asked, confused.

Kevin answered him. "Supplies. It took more than half our food supply to get here, and by the time we get back, we'll run out of our own supply by the time we get into the Woods. With the Red Weed, we'll never forage or hunt anything worth eating. If the Village is gone, then... Staying here is hell, but there's food being delivered."

"Or it could still be there, and they have enough in the stores and silos for another few  _months_." Edward commented.

Miserable silence. They could hear people wailing in the streets; for no reason other than simple horror at the state of their world. The four of them, with a private secret, even in these incredible times, huddled together as the chorus of human misery said it all for them.

Finally, Ivy lifted her sightless gaze. "Let's go home."

* * *

They agreed to leave early the next morning. Nobody would stop them from leaving the city. There were already too many people here.

None of them slept much. They left with the dawn. The soldiers didn't try to stop them, though Kevin didn't get his weapon back. They were issued no supplies, they were given no advice on where to go. It wasn't callousness or cruelty on their part; they simply had no supplies to spare, and no word from anyone else, so there was nowhere they could direct a leaving refugee to.

Ivy walked a little lighter on her feet once they were alone again. The isolation was grating their nerves, but Ivy was having nightmare flashbacks to the crowds. They kept walking without speaking. It was a fair hike back to the vehicle they had hidden. The camp had been a confronting experience for them, and they were quiet, letting themselves sort through it.

Until the Tripod Call sounded over the whole horizon.

The four of them froze, already scanning the distance. Two Tripods were visible in the distance. They were stalking towards Baltimore. The Refugee Camp was barely visible, but the Tripods stood hundreds of feet tall, easily visible.

"Holy god." Edward breathed. "Every time I see those things, they look more menacing."

They could hear the distant sounds of people screaming. The human soldiers were fighting back, firing rockets and shells up at the Machines. None of them got close. The rockets were detonating, but not on their targets. Something was blocking the counterattack.

They heard engines and turned to look. A formation of helicopters was rising from the far side of the highway and they all opened fire. Everyone ducked as first the missiles, then the helicopters passed overhead, heading for the Camp. First a few missiles, then ten, then dozens. Ivy clapped her hands over her ears and the men were blatantly staring. It was an impressive display of pyrotechnics and none of them had experienced such an up-close display of sheer firepower...

But the missiles never even got close, and if the Tripods noticed, it didn't show.

"How?" Lucius asked.

Kevin nodded. "That's how they beat us. It's easy to win when nobody can shoot back at you."

"This is madness." Ivy told them. "We're standing here watching."

The Tripods started firing back. There was a sharp electrical crackle as something like a narrow lightning bolt flashed out at the humans. The artillery, the tank, then men with guns...

 _Bzzzt!_   **Boom**. _Bzzt!_

The soundtrack of battle was simple and repetitive. The human resistance was frantic, and the Martians were bored. People were screaming, as the Tripods waded into the city, their mercury tentacles reaching down and snatching people up. Every now and then, the Tripods would deign to flash out the Heat Ray again. The laser went through the scattering people like a knife, sending up clouds of dust where it hit.

"Are we far enough away? Edward asked. His voice was hoarse.

"I don't know." Kevin said, sounding exhausted. "You've seen the cages. They're looking for fertilizer, and they'll find plenty down there."

Ivy slapped his arm hard. "Those are people you're talking about."

"And they're buying us an escape with their lives." Kevin said, his tone equally acidic. "I have nothing but respect for them, but if I think nice things, then I'll want to try and help them."

The wind shifted and they picked up the distant screaming. The sizzling crack of the Martian Heat Ray was drowning them out. When the Heat Ray passed, the screaming was cut terribly short.

"Edward, I owe you an apology." Lucius said quietly. "Before we left, I had thought for a time that perhaps Kevin's story was another lie, to keep Ivy and myself from leaving." He shivered hard. "I take it back. I take back any and all thoughts I may have had that compared you to  _that_."

Kevin smirked mirthlessly. "We should get moving."

Edward was looking back at the battle. "What is that?" He pointed. "When the Heat Ray fires at people, something goes flying up from the impact, but it's not a body, or debris. Look! It doesn't fall, it flutters down like leaves. What is that?"

Kevin was already walking. "Keep. Moving."

* * *

They walked until they returned to the road full of abandoned cars and trucks. Edward looked around as they walked through the dust clouds again. "Clothes." He said suddenly. "Empty clothes. That's what was flying around when the Tripod attacked."

"Clothes?" Ivy asked, unsettled. "I don't understand."

"The Heat Ray." Kevin explained. "It leaves the clothes behind."

"Behind?" Ivy froze. "What does that mean 'behind'?" She slowly raised a hand to her hair. "Kevin?" She quavered, sounding about four years old. "Where did all this dust come from?"

Kevin said nothing.

Ivy spun around with a yell, thrashing at her clothes and hair and skin, trying to get the dust off her frantically. Her husband tried to calm her, but he was covered in dust too, the feel of his dusty arms trying to hold her still just set her off again.

Edward looked at his daughter helplessly. She was in the same panic that he had inflicted on her when he had shown her the Costumes. It was the little girl panic. The same evil that her disability had spared her from this whole trip was now working against her. Her mouth, her nose, her skin were all thick with the unholy ashes of the world. All her senses were at the mercy of her horror.

Ivy kept thrashing, tears rolling down her face, until she exhausted herself to the point of passing out, still sobbing. "I want to go  _home_!"

Kevin didn't react. He'd seen panic attacks before. And now, so had Edward and Lucius. Kevin slipped over next to Edward. "Look at all the abandoned vehicles. Anything strike you as interesting?"

Edward looked. "The fuel tanks are all open. Somebody already siphoned them... Do we have enough fuel to make Covington?"

"I don't even know if we'll make Philly." Kevin admitted. "Should we tell them?"

Lucius had scooped Ivy up and carried her to the truck. She looked green with rising bile. "Not yet." Edward told Kevin.

The Tripod Call howled in the far distance behind them, but they didn't look back as Kevin climbed into the drivers seat, and they made their way back toward Philadelphia..

* * *

Ivy revived a little as the truck came to a shuddering halt on the road.

Lucius leaned forward, calling through to Kevin. "Something wrong with the truck?"

"No, this is fairly normal." Kevin commented plainly. "It's easy to fix. You just need to find more fuel."

Edward rolled his eyes. There wasn't another vehicle within sight, and they hadn't seen one for over an hour. "We're on foot again." He glanced over at his little family. "Ivy?"

"I can walk." Ivy promised. "If we're away from that dust, I can do anything."

* * *

They walked for a few hours over the Red Weed, trying to track the road. Lucius noticed it first. "Kevin, do you see that?"

Kevin looked where he was pointing, and raised an eyebrow. "I see it..."

The Red Weed was thinning out, and turning an ashen gray as they progressed. The dull gray was spreading through the plant. Edward bent down and prodded at the weed. It was hard and brittle against his fingers. Edward pried a piece up and it snapped away... crumbing into dust instantly. "Oh my."

Kevin looked intrigued. Even a little excited. "What's happening to it? Something's killing the Red Weed. It's not lack of supply, since they just hit Baltimore. It's not that it grew too far, we've seen it thin away to nothing, and the color never changed. The Weed is dying."

"It's not the only thing."

Kevin looked up, and saw the Lucius had moved a little further ahead, and was looking off the side of the road. It was down an embankment, behind some strangled wildgrass. In the debris, there was a familiar shape, laid out flat and its legs splayed out, one of them twisted and broken under the bulk.

It was a Tripod.

Kevin was stunned, barely able to make a sound as the others came to the edge of the road to look. "Holy Sh-"

"What took it down?!" Edward demanded as soon as he saw it. "Look at it, no blast marks, no burns, no holes through it, at least none that I can see."

Lucius was already moving closer. Ivy let him go, standing at the edge of the road. Edward noticed this, and slid over next to his daughter. "I can remember a time when you would have gone with him to explore the thing. It was yesterday, in fact."

Ivy said nothing. There was a darkness on her face. "The boys in the village stand with their backs to the woods at night." She whispered. "They test themselves, to see how long they can last before they get scared. Lucius holds the record. It will never be broken now. Lucius is fascinated by things that frighten him."

Edward put his hand in hers. She squeezed his fingers. "I'm sorry for the way I treated you." She said shortly.

"And I am sorry for what I have brought on us." Edward answered.

Ivy ran her fingers through her hair again, almost compulsively, until the dust was gone. "It doesn't seem to matter any more."

* * *

Painted on the side of the fallen Tripod was some graffiti:  _ _ **Remember Thunderchild!**__

"What is 'Thunderchild'?" Lucius asked.

Kevin answered him. "I heard about that on the CB, right before it went dark too. The Navy had a warship called the Thunderchild off the coast, and it managed to lure one of these things out onto the marina; and then when it reached the docks, they blew up the entire waterfront. They couldn't hit the Tripod, but they took out the dock under it's legs, and the whole thing dropped into the ocean. The water was shallow, but the thing never got it's feet back under it, and they hammered it with everything they had. Until now... I thought it was the only one we'd ever managed to beat in the whole damn war."

* * *

They walked another few hours until dark, then camped by the road, unwilling to have a campfire. They walked again when the sun rose, and finally the battered, empty towers of Philadelphia came back into view. The roads became littered with debris, and thousands of empty clothes... and bodies.

"What do you think?" Edward asked Kevin.

Kevin glanced around. "We find a car that's still in something like one piece, and I see if I can get it moving again. We have to go through the damaged area to get out of the city in the right directio-"

**BOOOM!**

The four of them ducked automatically, startled by the sudden blast. An instant later, the Tripod suddenly appeared, exploding up from behind a building. The Tripod took most of the building apart as it tried to straighten up.

The four of them took off running, Ivy being led by the hand. They were all sliding and stumbling over debris, but didn't care, still trying to run for their lives.

 _Thhhhwww_ - **BOOOM!**

The sound of a rocket was barely audible over the explosions. The air shook apart under the roar of a Tripod Call.

"Here!Here!Here!" Kevin shouted and everyone followed him. He had found a torn up storm drain, the concrete had been ripped up enough for them to cram themselves into the hole in the ground. They pressed into the tunnel, seeking cover as the Tripod weaved and rocked back and forth as though it was drunk.

"A new weapon?" Edward croaked.

There was a whistling sound again, and another explosion rocked the Tripod back, as though hit with an uppercut.

"There!" Lucius pointed, almost eager. The adrenaline of the battle was catching him, making him excited.

They followed his gaze, and sure enough, a small team of soldiers were hiding in the wrecked buildings. Three that they could see, in different directions.

Ivy was deeper in the drain than any of them, being as small as she could. "I hear birds." She said quietly.

"Birds?" Kevin found that hilarious. "Ivy, they're  **winning**! Do you get that? What have they got? They've figured something out!"

"Birds." Lucius pointed, even as Edward hauled him back deeper into the drain. He was almost climbing out of it. "Look! She's right. Hundreds of them!"

He was right. There were hundreds of birds flocking around the head of the Tripod They were circling, even dive-bombing it as the huge Machine rocked back and forth. They were trying to get inside it. They were hungry... and tapping away at the hull with their beaks.

"No Shields." Edward and Kevin said in the same moment.

Edward almost had to sit on Lucius to keep him from charging into the middle of it. "The weed! The Red Weed was dying! Something's happened! Something's killing them!"

The Tripod rocked on its three long legs. The Heat Ray came around slowly... More rockets came whistling in. Two hit hard, right where the legs met the body of the thing, and the Tripod reeled, its support failing away.

Lucius and Kevin whooped as the Metal War Machine came crashing down in flames. It didn't get back up again.

The four of them climbed out of the hole in the ground, running forward.

In the distance, a Jeep roared to life and came charging up. A soldier was on the back, holding a mounted gun. He had the weapon trained on the head of the machine as the vehicle closed in on their fallen target.

The four civilians came running up too, cheering the victors wildly.

The soldiers mostly ignored them, keeping their eyes on the downed Machine.

It was the first time the four of them got a good look at the cockpit. There was a Martian inside, plastered across the inside of the Tripod. The hull had been shattered when it hit the ground. The birds were already clawing their way inside, eager to feed.

"At least the crows were happy to see the Martians." One of the soldiers commented. "Who are you?"

Edward was about to respond to that when the Sapper Teams that had shot it down came strolling up to join their crew.

Kevin read their shoulders and saluted the CO. "Major."

The Major saluted back reflexively. "Civilians? How'd you survive this long?"

"We didn't." Lucius explained quickly. "We were just passing through the city."

Kevin was waving up at the Tripod eagerly. "How did you do it? How did you knock out the Shield?"

"We didn't." The Jeep gunner said easily, but the Major gave him a sharp look.

"So what changed?" Kevin demanded.

The Major sighed and shrugged. "They just started falling down. It looks like they're getting sick."

Ivy let out a cold, bitter laugh, gripping her husband's arm tightly. "Infection." She laughed darkly. "Infection, of all things." She rolled her sightless gaze up to her husband's face.

Edward was thrilled. "If they're getting sick... If they've caught something fatal, then it means we've won. If they've picked up something that they can't cure, or at the very least, something that weakens them enough to knock them down, then the Extermination is over."

"Seems that way." The Major nodded. He didn't seem particularly excited by it. "How long have you folks been on the road?"

"A few days." Lucius answered reflexively.

"Then you have a food supply." The Major commented. "The Heat Ray irradiated most of the tinned goods somehow."

The comment set Edward's instincts off, and he gave Lucius a sharp look before the younger man could offer an answer. Kevin, meanwhile, was looking past the Major at the Jeep. "So... You'd have to take advantage of the moment then, huh?"

The Major looked hard at him. "What?"

Kevin was still looking at the Jeep. The rear of it was filled, almost to bursting, with salvage. Jewelery, cash, coins, statuettes, antiques. The soldiers had been collecting valuables.

Edward hadn't noticed. "How long do you think it will be, until services return to normal?"

That question set off a round of laughter from the soldiers. "Mister, I'd be surprised if it took less than a year." The Major told him candidly. "So, where's the food?"

Kevin stilled.

"What food?" Lucius asked.

"Well, you guys aren't scrounging, and you just said aren't from here. You've got supplies." The Major's eyes were ice. "So where is your food?"

By now, even Lucius was starting to realize. This was not a polite conversation.

"Our men haven't eaten in two days." The Major commented. "You can afford to share some." He made his gun a little more obvious.

Stalemate.

Edward broke it. "Yes, we can." He declared. "Our food is with our packs. You just took down a Tripod, that's surely worth a few rolls." He gestured to Ivy. "My daughter is blind. I would appreciate you letting her and her husband stay with your vehicle." He squeezed Ivy's hand tightly. "It's getting warmer at last."

Ivy stilled for half a second, and gave her father a nod as something passed between them unspoken. They were talking about the weather.

The Major gave Lucius a look, and gestured for one of his men to stay at the Jeep with them.

The Major and two of his soldiers went with Kevin and Edward. The rest stayed close to the Martian Machine, watching it with careful eyes.

Kevin led them slowly back to the storm drain they had hidden in during the battle. "So, you've knocked down more than one?" He asked conversationally. "We found another one knocked down outside the city."

"We saw it too." The Major nodded. "It wasn't us. Whatever got them, it's getting them good."

* * *

"Lucius." Ivy said quietly, almost whispering in his ear. "My father expects trouble. Are we alone?"

"There is one soldier with us. He is armed." Lucius reported. "We are at their Jeep. The others are about thirty feet away."

Ivy whispered. "Put me in the Jeep."

Lucius guided her to the door, and their guard put a hand up. "Hold on a moment."

Ivy turned to him and bent over a little, exaggerating her exhaustion. "Oh please, sir? I just want to sit down. I've been walking for so long..."

The soldier softened. "Well, I guess I can be sure you're not going to steal it, huh?"

Ivy gave him a grateful smile and sat herself in the drivers seat. Her fingers raked lightly over the wheel, settling on it carefully.

"The middle of the wheel." Lucius whispered to her. "I think."

* * *

The Major watched as Kevin and Edward pulled their packs out of the storm drain. His two soldiers just watched as they hoisted the packs out and climbed back up.

"Is that all of it?" The Major asked.

Edward and Kevin were silent for a few minutes. It was going to happen any second, whatever it was.

"Major." Edward said carefully. "Our food supply is enough for four people over a few days... It won't go far between all your soldiers. We have no weapons, and no wish to cause any trouble."

The Major nodded. "I'm sure you don't, but see... Food goes a lot further with less mouths to feed."

"You can take it." Kevin suggested. "We couldn't stop you, and there's no reason to keep us around if you don't have to."

"Well, there's the thing." The Major said, almost seeming to be embarrassed b y it. "What I told you was true. It'll be ages until anyone sorts out whatever's left, now that the Martians are dropping... but sooner or later they will. Sooner or later, this'll be a city again... and sooner or later, stuff like gold and cash and coin will have value." He spread his arms wide. "Three extra people can carry a whole lot of coin, and if we've got the guns then we don't have to feed you."

"'Three'?" Edward grated. "What do you mean 'three extra people'?"

The Major snorted. "We got no room for a blind girl that can't work without someone to supervise her every minute." He shrugged. "I know what you must think of us, but we've been getting shot at by things from another world all week, and we don't even get supplied with  _food_  any more, let alone our salary." He glanced at his people. "I promised my guys that I'd get them through whatever got thrown at us. I owe it to them to have a retirement plan in place too."

Things happened suddenly then.

First, The Major turned and waved back at his people.

Second, Kevin lunged for him, grabbing at The Major's belt, trying to get a handgun.

Third, the guard that stayed with Lucius and Ivy turned his weapon at the married couple, casually aiming in their direction.

Fourth, Ivy slammed both her hands on the car horn, shattering the quiet wasteland. The guard aiming at them jumped in surprise, and Lucius struck. He'd never thrown a punch in his life, but his wife was in danger and that was enough to make him put everything he had into the uppercut.

Their guard was a reservist, and had spent most of his military career working somewhere else. Lucius had spent his entire adult life as a blacksmith. The punch lifted the armed man straight off his feet, and knocked him out cold.

Kevin and Edward were struggling with The Major, trying to knock him down. His two guards were rushing forward, trying to get a clear shot. Kevin rolled them both over, putting The Major on top of him. The position made it impossible for the guards to defend their commander at a distance, and they rushed forward.

There was a metallic click, and something dropped off the Major's belt.

"GRENADE!" Someone screamed, and everyone dove in different direction, seeking cover. Kevin heaved The Major over into the Storm Drain, and the grenade rolled after him.

The blast went off a moment later, and Edward and Kevin were already running.

There were still several soldiers between them, gathered around the Tripod, and now running in both directions, going after all of them.

Edward and Kevin had escaped their nearest attackers, and were running through the wreckage, looking for cover from the endless fields of wreckage. The fallen buildings and wrecked vehicles gave them plenty; but they were being led further and further away from their family.

Gunfire chased them. The surviving soldiers were getting close enough to take a shot or two at them, but not close enough to aim.

* * *

Lucius was trying to figure out how to work the safety on the gun he'd taken, and was failing. He knew enough from seeing Kevin's weapon to know that there were two buttons, and one would unload it. He wasn't willing to try.

The soldiers were starting to realize that Lucius wasn't going to shoot them, and they came forward.

"Ivy!" Lucius shouted. "One o'clock!"

Ivy let out a low cry of horror, as she slammed her feet down hard on the pedals. The Jeep lurched, and halted, then lurched again, until Ivy figured out the difference between brake and accelerator, and then the Jeep exploded forward. Ivy clutched at the wheel, not knowing what she was doing, and Lucius ran after her as the soldiers scattered out of her way.

* * *

"We can't let them keep pushing us this way!" Edward called to Kevin. "We're getting too far away from the kids."

"I know!" Kevin shouted. "We'll have to circle around."

They tried to make their way back, using the downed Tripod as their target. They tried to run without raising their heads.

They came into the clearing where the Tripod fell, and glanced around. There was no sign of the soldiers. There was still a cloud of smoke from the burning Storm Drain. Hidden between two piles of wrecked building, the two refugees didn't have a good view.

But they could hear the Jeep moving, and Ivy screaming. It was off to their left, out of sight. Kevin slapped a hand on Edward's shoulder. "There!"

Edward looked, and saw Lucius running from the Tripod toward them. A moment later, two soldiers became visible, giving chase. One of them went down on one knee, taking aim at Lucius' back.

"DROP!" Kevin yelled, and Lucius obeyed. The bullet whistled past his head as he dove.

The shout was enough to draw attention, and they heard the soldiers coming for them too...

...when Ivy drove past, still screaming.

Kevin didn't think, he just lunged, He dove for the jeep and managed to get hold of the passenger side door. He was dragged along for several feet, but Ivy wasn't going nearly as fast as she could have; and he managed to find his footing. "IVY!"

"KEVIN!" Ivy yelped, hands flying up to her mouth in surprise, then compulsively grabbing for the steering wheel again. "Kevin! I'm driving!"

"I noticed! You're doing fine!" He grated. "LEFT!"

Ivy spun the wheel, missing a shorn off brick wall by inches. Kevin clambered up into the back of the Jeep and swung around the mounted gun. "Ivy, stop us here!"

"Why?" Ivy called back in fear, when the Jeep slammed into an overturned car. It wasn't moving fast enough to send her out the windshield, but the impact nearly threw Kevin off the back, and smacked her face into the steering wheel at the same time. "...ow."

Kevin regained his footing as a gunshot whistled past his ear, close enough that he could hear it. He grabbed for the mounted gun and started firing. He didn't have a clear enough view to aim, but he didn't need to. He wasn't trying to kill anyone, just keep them away from Lucius as he sprinted for the Jeep.

Edward came running too. "Ivy, move over, I'm driving!"

"Yeah, good idea." Ivy drawled, exhausted. She slid over to the passenger side, just as Lucius reached the passenger side door, and climbed in as fast as he could, sandwiching her between the two of them. A bullet smashed into the window before he could get the door closed.

Edward shifted into reverse and floored the accelerator, backing them way from the wreck. Bullets peppered the jeep, and they could hear Kevin firing back. Edward dropped the jeep into gear and floored it again, getting them away from Philadelphia; with gunfire chasing them the whole way.

They kept going for another ten minutes, until they were sure that there were no other vehicles to chase them.

"Ivy, congratulations on completing your first driving test." Edward said dryly.

Ivy would have laughed if she wasn't shaking so much. "Please don't ask me to do that ever again. Ever."

Lucius was watching the side view mirror. "They're not following."

Edward slowed down. "Good. Well, we went to Philly looking for a new vehicle, and while I was hoping for something a little less... exciting, it looks like we succeeded."

Lucius was still looking in the mirror, when he saw Kevin's arm flop into view. "Oh No!"

Edward looked, and paled; pulling the vehicle to a stop. The three of them hurried around to the back of the Jeep. Kevin was still there, splayed across the tray, holding onto the mounted gun with one hand. Blood had spread from a gunshot wound to his midsection.

"No." Ivy picked up the smell of it. "NoNoNo!"

Edward was on him instantly, putting pressure on the wound. The pressure didn't even rouse Kevin. Lucius checked his pulse. "He's... he's gone."

Ivy let out a sob and grabbed at Kevin's hand. "Kevin?" She called. "You can't be gone, I know you're not gone." She was clutching his hand between hers. "You promised. You can't die. You're going to be the godfather, remember? You promised! Wake up!"

Edward and Lucius were both looking, heartsick; right up until Ivy said the word 'godfather'. They were both staring at her, jaws hanging open.

Ivy stopped whispering to Kevin, hating the slow surrender to the inevitable. She felt for his face, and slid his eyes closed. She looked up at Lucius. "I convinced him to come with us."

"We all did." Lucius said softly, and wrapped her in a tight hug. Edward joined them a moment later, hugging them both to himself, and to each other.

* * *

Lucius broke the moment first. "We can't stay. Those soldiers are still only a few minutes away. Less if they have another car."

Ivy sniffed. "We can't leave him here. We can't leave him for them."

Nobody argued with that. Edward arranged him a little more securely in the back, and laid his Red Cloak over his face.

"Edward?" Lucius asked finally. "Do you know how to get us back to Covington?"

"I do." Edward nodded. "We will drive until we are safe, and find a place to give Kevin a decent burial."

"Can we take him back to Covington?" Ivy asked. "He deserves to be there with us. He belongs there as much as anyone."

"I agree, Ivy; but it's still a fair journey back to the Preserve, and we can't carry him through the woods." Edward took no pleasure in it. "We went through the same thing with Noah. The terrain makes it impossible on foot."

"But he..." Ivy looked at Lucius. "He'll be all alone."

Silence.

"I will carry him." Lucius offered. "By myself, on my back, if I have to." Edward looked like he wanted to argue the point, and Lucius made it clear. "We have to. He's the godfather of my first child."

Edward gave him a nod. "Very well. Then we had best move smartly, before nature takes hold."

They wrapped him in their red cloaks, tying them around his body as a burial shroud. They secured him in the back of the Jeep, and Ivy rode in the back with him, to make sure he did not fall.

* * *

It was after dark when they finally reached the edge of the Woods. They considered climbing the wall and heading into the Woods directly, but even without the Martians, the woods would be treacherous; so they decided to go the little bit further and take the path in that they knew already.

The Ranger Station looked very different on the outside with the Red Weed turned gray, but the inside was more or less as they'd left it.

"The last time we were here..." Edward said softly. "...the Martian machines were working, spraying the Red Weed. This is where we came out of the woodland."

"I remember the first part." Lucius nodded. "The second, I was unconscious. Sorry about that, by the way."

Edward nodded. "You have nothing to apologize for, son. But getting you a mere hundred meters to the Ranger Station was... incredibly difficult. You're stronger than Kevin and I put together, Lucius; but the ground alone is sharp and deadly where we must walk."

Lucius sighed. "I know."

They drove a little further, coming around the edge of the Reserve. The trees were all shattered here, bodies littering the streets, and the dying weed coating all of it in a layer of dust.

And yet, amazingly, the cracked and shattered road was lined with full blooming wildflowers on either side. They lasted for over a hundred meters. Little yellow flowers, all over the place.

"Good color." Edward commented.

Lucius looked at him, and they both burst out laughing.

* * *

Ivy was dozing, one hand resting on Kevin's burial shroud, when the bumpy ride slowed to a halt.

She heard the doors open and close. She wanted to call to her husband, but if they had stopped for some kind of threat, she did not dare draw attention.

Lucius came around beside her and clasped her hand. "Ivy." He said in her ear, gentle and warm. "We've reached the point where we left the woods." He squeezed her fingers. "The Tripod is still here, but it's dead. It managed to stay on it's feet, but it's dead."

"Good." Ivy said shortly.

"Your father wants to know if we should abandon this vehicle and head into the woods, or sleep in the Ranger Station as we did on our way out. We can either camp in the trees, or in the Station. It'll be dark in an hour or two."

"The station, then." Ivy agreed.

He didn't pull away. "Ivy, there's one more thing."

Ivy sighed. "I know." She whispered. She turned her gaze on Kevin's body. "We can't take him with us. I'm sorry I made such a fuss before. But I couldn't bear the thought of just... leaving him on the road."

Lucius sighed. "If it was at all possible, I would do it." He promised. "But our supplies are gone, and it's still a two day hike back to the village."

"I know." She nodded. "You said that we were at the point we left the woods? Near the gravel path?"

"We are." Lucius confirmed.

Ivy slid off the back of the truck. "This is where Keven and I first met, the first time he saved our lives." She groaned, stretching a little. "It's as good a place to lay him to rest as any."

* * *

The Military Jeep had tools, but only small shovels. The Red Weed had stripped the ground clear of tangled roots and hard packed soil. As it crumbled away, it left only soil, turned up by its spidery red creepers digging in. The earth was softer and easier to move than it had been in years.

They dug a shallow grave for him, with branches and flat stones. It was hard work, but nobody complained.

They buried him there, at the edge of the woods, between the trees and the road. It was here that he worked most of his adult life, and the first place he had sought refuge when the world ended.

They drove a stick into the ground as a headstone, and slung his Ranger jacket over it. Ivy put his whistle around her neck, as Edward spoke words over the grave.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Edward intoned. "And we are grateful for the time we have been given."

He would have said more, but it wasn't his place. Both men looked to Ivy, expecting something.

"I know there has to be more than that..." Ivy whispered. "But for the first time, I think I don't know what to say..."

Silence.

Finally, Lucius spoke. "I think..." He cleared his throat, not used to speaking. "I think that Kevin had little worry for the dead. He would have said that there were too many to worry about." He gestured to the road to make his point. "But, he said more than once, that there was no point in trying to relive your life, trying to find the one choice or the one moment you can blame for the things you lost. He told me that such things get in the way of survival, and without that, you'll never live at all."

Ivy's eyes were shining, part with tears for her friend, but mostly with love for her husband. He hated speaking in front of people, and eulogies were the worst of the lot. But he had done it anyway, so that she wouldn't have to.

By that time, it was dark. They went back to the Jeep and found their way to the Ranger Station.

* * *

Ivy let her husband lead her to the couch, and she collapsed without a word. She was asleep before she was lying down. Lucius tucked her cloak around her and let her sleep.

"How is she?" Edward whispered.

"Tired. She did not sleep last night. She has... not taken the loss of Kevin well." Lucius conceded. "She has been undergoing a slow collapse for a while now. It started when she had to decide the fate of our village; especially since it drew her in opposition to her own parents. It got worse when she found out about Noah. It got worse still when we got to The Towns. Ivy is more capable than anyone I know, but she is still blind. She can find anywhere in the village from anywhere else, down to the number of steps she takes, but she was at the mercy of us, and our attackers, the entire time. Add to that the fact that her senses suddenly became a source of terror to her once she found out where that haze came from, plus the death of Kevin, plus the way people were in the refugee camp-"

"I get the point." Edward sighed.

"She's exhausted, and she wants to go home." Lucius summed up. "She blames herself for Kevin. And... I share in that blame."

"As do I." Edward sighed.

Lucius looked back at Ivy, dozing fitfully on the couch. "How do I tell her?"

"Tell her what?"

"What she already knows." Lucius whispered. "We can't stay at Covington. Not without food. We don't have enough stores to make it through summer, let alone until the next harvest, and even if the Red Weed is gone, everything in the woods has already been strangled, so turning to hunting isn't really an option for getting the whole Village through winter. We have to leave the Woods eventually."

Edward looked mournful. "We have nowhere to go."

"Like everyone else in the world." Lucius commented.

Long silence. Edward went to the desk and collected the discarded newspapers that Lucius had noticed.

"Why the newspapers?" Lucius asked. "And I saw you break into the library at Baltimore. What were you after?"

"I taught history, before we left." Edward explained. "My knowledge of world history is now out of date. A newspaper gives me the most recent news, and a history textbook from the library fills in some more."

"But surely with the Extermination, all that information is useless now."

"It is, but we need it, nonetheless." Edward countered. "Because we are  _not_  like everyone else in the world." He gave Lucius an ironic smile. "Everyone else in the world at least knows what century it is."

Lucius just looked at him.

"I know." Edward held up his hands. "That's my job. We have a month or two left in our supplies, and we have to use them to prepare... for our evacuation."

Long silence.

"Before we left, your mother asked me a question: if I had to do it over again, would I still have started Covington Village?" Edward said quietly.

"And?"

"I honestly don't know, even now." Edward sighed.

Lucius smiled, just a little. "If Covington Village had never been started, then Ivy and I would not have met." He looked over at Ivy, who was twisting in nightmare, but too tired to wake up. "For what it's worth, I came to your house one night after Kitty's Wedding. Ivy came out and we were engaged within two minutes. I came to your house because I was afraid Ivy was scared from the attack. I should have known better, but if it wasn't for your Halloween Costumes, Ivy and I wouldn't be together."

Lucius left his father in law then, and slipped over to his wife, sliding in next to her. Her tossing, haunted sleep eased the instant she felt his arms go around her.

Edward kept the watch for a while, staring out of the dark windows, down the dark, dusty road; watching for the approach of anyone, human or Alien. Both were lethal to them now.

They had been walking for days, and the world they had walked through was a burden on their tired souls. Edward fought it valiantly, but succumbed to sleep after a few hours.

* * *

Ivy woke sharply. She missed the days when she could wake up, slow and lazy. Now her senses seemed always alert for danger, even in sleep. She wondered if she could ever be lazy again. It seemed like a different woman's life.

Lucius was asleep, one arm around her, and she carefully picked herself free of him, feeling her way to the window.

Her unseeing eyes gazed back and forth. Lucius and her father. She could see their color clearly. But about thirty feet away, almost still now, the other tiny beacon of color was calling to her... and it was going out.

* * *

Lucius woke up with the dawn. Ivy was gone. He sat bolt upright instantly. "Edward!" He hissed.

Edward Walker groaned as his eyes opened. "Son?" His eyes focused. "Where's Ivy?"

And then, from about thirty feet away, came a spine-chilling cry. "Ulla!"

Both men spun, and quickly moved to follow the noise. They both knew only one creature that made a sound like that, and running toward it was never a smart move... but Ivy was missing, and if there was a chance that she was with the Martian, they didn't care how great the risk was to get her back.

"Ulla!" The inhuman screech came again.

"I know. I know." A voice said with open pity, answering the creature.

And that was how they found Ivy Hunt, sitting against a tree, with the creature. She was stroking its face gently, as it lay, clearly dying, in her lap. It's three fingered hand was in hers, crying out pitifully. But its cries were growing weaker and thinner with each passing breath.

"...ullah!" The Martian sobbed pitifully.

Ivy shushed it, rocking it gently, like a sick child. "Shh. It's okay. It's okay. I'm here."

"...uuulllaa..."

Ivy kept rocking back and forth, and started to sing quietly, as she would when one of her siblings would sob themselves to sleep.

_"Baby sleep,_

_gently sleep..._

_Live is long and love is deep."_

Lucius and Edward just stared blankly at the impossible sight, until the creature's dark eyes turned milky white, and its rasping breath faded to nothing.

_"Time will be_

_Sweet for thee_

_All the world to see._

_Time to look around and know_

_How the shadows come and go_

_How the breeze_

_stirs the trees_

_How the blossoms grow..."_

"Ivy..." Edward whispered finally, afraid to break the spell that the moment held over them all.

The young woman looked up at her father. "I cannot see its color." She whispered, with tears rolling gently on her face. "Papa, its color was so clear and strong... I can only see a haze of it in you and Lucius. In the Martians it's as clear as a beacon. Just my father, my husband... and the monsters."

Lucius looked to Edward. "What does that  _mean_?"

Ivy shook herself free of the repulsive corpse, and laid it down gently from her lap to the cold ground. "I don't know." She held out a hand and shuffled toward them. Her husband caught her hand in his instantly and pulled her to his side. She laid a head on his shoulder a moment, breathing him in, before lifting her gaze to her father. For a moment, the look was accusing. "Shall we continue on?"

* * *

The Red Weed was rotting away in the Woods too. The gray, ghostly trees were shedding a light coating of dust. So was the grass.

Lucius crouched low. "Grass." He commented. "The Weed strangled the ground cover, but there's still grass."

Edward looked too. "So there is. That's unusual. I would think that if the crops hadn't pushed through the weed, then the grass certainly wouldn't."

* * *

They paused to rest. Their food had been used up; and there were precious few places to get more. Edward drew a device neither of them recognized from his pack and started working it. He turned a handle on the side, and then started turning the dials. The sound of static rang out quietly, and he adjusted it.

"What is that?" Lucius asked.

"It's a radio." Edward explained. "I found it back at the Ranger Station. I'm guessing Kevin didn't bother with it, since the radios were all down and his CB at the station lasted longer than anything else. This kind of radio is powered kinetically, like my old pocketwatch. Wind it up, and you can hear if anyone in the area is transmitting."

"If they are, surely that is a bad thing." Ivy commented.

"Not necessarily. Radio technology is decades old. According to Kevin, it had been replaced by methods of communication, but the towers are all there. If anyone wishes to direct survivors, report the latest information, make announcements, I'd imagine that they'd-"

As if to answer him, the radio suddenly picked up a frequency.  _"...Boston, San Francisco and Illinois have reported that the Tripods in their area have dropped. We can't confirm that, of course; but if it's true, then it's probably not a weapon, or anything we came up with. It's just happening too fast in too many places. We've been trying to find a doctor who can examine this, but it can't be anything like typhoid or cholera. Again, too many places at once. It could be as something as the common cold, but..."_  The radio faded to static again.

"It sounds like good news." Edward offered. "I'll keep looking."

As he did that, Ivy drew Lucius a little bit away from her father. "How are you faring?"

Lucius yawned. "I am... fatigued."

Ivy rolled her eyes at the understatement. "I'm ready to faint too." She promised.

He suddenly looked worried. "You are feeling lightheaded? You should drink more water."

"I'm fine."

"We can pause for a break any time you like. You didn't sleep as long as we did, you should take some rest now."

"Lucius-"

"And we can forage for some food here. Those berry bushes may have been tall enough to survive the Red Weed. Why don't you get some sleep? I'll run ahead and bring something back for you. You need-"

Ivy sighed. "This is going to continue for the next nine months, isn't it?"

"If you did not wish me to be overprotective, you shouldn't have told me I was going to be a father."

Ivy looked down. "I should have told you first. I had the doctor at the camp test me. I should have waited until we were back."

"Why didn't you?" He asked, genuinely curious.

"Honestly?" Ivy admitted. "I didn't think we were ever coming back." She relaxed into him a bit. "I was certain I was going to lose my sanity in that place."

"You do seem to be better now that we're back in the woods." Lucius observed.

"The woods have little to do with it." Ivy told him. "While it's true that I'll never fit in at a city; the reason I... recovered my balance? It was the Martian."

"The Dying Martian?" Lucius was surprised. "Why?"

"Same reason I ceased to be afraid of Those-We-Don't-Speak-Of when I found out they were costumes." Ivy told him simply. "I hated them so much. And then suddenly I saw the real thing... And it was..."

"It was dying, and lonely, and scared." Lucius finished.

Ivy nodded. "I knew leaving the station was dangerous, but I went anyway. I suppose I must have gone a little mad on our journey. I think I had faced enough horror that I didn't care facing more." She rubbed her eyes a little. "It took seeing one of them die in my arms to realize they were as flesh and blood as us."

"That's not what made you feel better. It wasn't the Martian, it was you. That was how you got your spirits back."

"What do you mean?" Ivy asked.

"It's what you said to the town before we left." Lucius said. "About how the one thing stronger than fear and anger is love. You hated the Martians. You were afraid of them. And then along came one that needed help. It is the story your father told us, about the Good Samaritan. Enemies can still show love when one is in dire need."

"Strange, aren't I?" She admitted ruefully. "The Martians took away Kevin, and turned what should have been a very happy day into a difficult one." She sighed. "Like when I promised to give papa our verdict on our first anniversary."

Lucius couldn't help the snort. "It has indeed been quite a year."

"It's not over yet, is it?" She said quietly. "I can hear you and Papa talking; and even if I couldn't, I'm not a fool. I know we can't stay in the village for long."

Lucius wanted to promise her it would all be okay, but eventually he nodded. "The Martians are dying. We can probably find somewhere in the world that recovers faster than Baltimore."

Ivy pulled him over and rested his hand over her stomach. "Lucius, this year we've braved the woods, fought monsters, set our village on its head, threatened a bloodless coup against the Elders, burned away the scary monsters, broken a lifelong fear, survived a refugee camp, lived through an alien invasion, started our family, and buried two friends." She smiled up at him. "And it's still the very best year of my entire life, because I spent it with you."

He kissed her then. "It was an incredible year."

She smiled. "We'll find somewhere. The world, it appears, is a big place after all. Right now, I have what I need. I love you, and I'm not afraid. Not any more. Not of anything."

Lucius smiled. "Me neither."


	5. New Deal

Another few hours of walking, and they came out of the woods, into Covington Village. The Red Weed had dissolved away to nothing.

Christop was the first to meet them. He had been waiting at the tower, keeping watch over the woods until they emerged. "Ivy. Lucius." He said quickly, ignoring Edward completely. "Thank heaven that you are safe."

Edward twitched. Tradition in the village was to acknowledge the eldest before the younger, and as head of the town council, Edward should have been greeted first, as a matter of simple protocol. Christop had blatantly ignored him.

"Christop." Lucius shook his hand. He looked past the man and found that a crowd was gathering, news of their arrival spreading quickly. Lucius looked carefully at the crowd, searching for a familiar face.

Christop knew who he was looking for. "Lucius, your mother is in the Quiet Room; I can take you to her soon, but right now, the villagers need to know what you learned out there."

Edward held up a hand. "Wait. Alice is in the Quiet Room?"

"Along with everyone else on the Town Council." Christop said with a curt nod. "And Mister Walker, I am to take you there to join them immediately."

"Things happened while we were away." Ivy commented dryly.

"After you left, there was a forum with the villagers." Christop reported. "The Elders faced an awful lot of questions, and the Town agreed unanimously that we couldn't have them in charge any longer. All the things they've made us afraid of, all the children denied medicines... There was a growing number of people who wanted to have them all stoned to death."

Ivy twitched, surprised at that. "Are you serious?"

"Well, we didn't know what else to do with them. Our food supplies were suddenly shortened dramatically, we have no prisons to hold them in, we did not dare exile them, for fear of where they might go... and what they might bring back if we let them leave."

"And you couldn't know that until we returned." Edward commented.

"Fortunately, the... better angels in this village made the argument that we should wait and see if you came back." Christop explained. "They will be glad to see you. Another week and we would have decided you all died out there... and then it would have been put to a vote." Christop glanced at Edward. "The vote would not have gone well."

Edward's eyebrows had migrated to his hairline at what he was hearing. "I may have been safer with the Tripods."

"They're angry." Ivy sighed.

"And now that we're back, what happens now?" Lucius asked.

Christop stepped over to Edward. "I have to take him now. Kitty asked me to wait here until you returned, because someone needed to tell you before the whole Town fell on you at once."

"Kitty had you come here? She asked you herself?" Ivy noted.

Christop couldn't help the smile. "She did. She also said that if at all possible, she had hoped to speak to Ivy first, before you made your decision."

Ivy smiled softly, and began walking toward the village, arm in arm with her husband.

"There is a crowd gathering." Lucius commented to Ivy. "Go to your sister. I'll talk to the villagers."

"You will?" Ivy seemed surprised. " _You_  will?" Lucius was fearless at any speed... except where public speaking was concerned.

He smirked, also aware of the irony. "What can I say? I guess I have a new standard on fear."

"What will you tell them?"

"The truth. That the Martians are real, and that they are dying off... and that we will make an announcement once we have recovered from a long journey."

Ivy put a hand up, touching his lips lightly. "Tell them all that, but don't tell them the War is over. Not yet."

Lucius was stunned. "Ivy?"

"Just... let me talk to Kitty first."

* * *

The door to the Quiet Room opened, and Edward was unceremoniously pushed inside. There were over a dozen of the Town Elders already inside. Including his wife, and Alice.

Alice reached him first, and gave him a tight hug. It was an outrageous move for her, but nobody seemed surprised. Not even Tabitha.

"You made it!" Alice said once she broke the hug. "Lucius and Ivy?"

"They are safe." Edward promised. "We lost Kevin on our journey. And he was right about the Martians. He was right about everything."

Nobody said anything. A dozen unwashed, shell-shocked people, all crammed into one small room, looking tired and stunned at the shift in their lives. A few of them even had bandages. The revelation had not been gentle, and had not been kind to them.

It was like being back in the refugee camp.

Edward sighed. "My friends, things have got to change."

* * *

Kitty was in the schoolhouse. As Ivy had done, an eternity before, she was sitting in her old seat, front row, to the left of where Ivy used to sit. Kitty heard the familiar tapping of Ivy's cane, rapping against the schoolhouse stairs. Kitty jumped to her feet as Ivy pushed the schoolhouse door open.

"So, you took him back." Ivy commented. It was not a question. "Good."

Kitty covered the length of the school in two strides, and Ivy was happy to meet her halfway. Both sisters wrapped their arms around each other, holding on tight.

"I was so scared you wouldn't come back." Kitty whispered tearfully. "Part of me thought you and Lucius would just keep going once you were out."

"I wouldn't abandon you." Ivy promised. "I love you."

Kitty broke the hug. "Did Papa come back with you?"

"He did." Ivy promised. "He is safe. Christop met us at the woods and took him away to lock him up."

"It seemed the safest option." Kitty sighed. "Did Christop tell you about the Red Weed?"

"That it was dying?" Ivy was surprised. "No, but we already knew. The woods are full of crumbling weed dust."

Kitty grinned. "That dust? Is incredible fertilizer. I don't know why, but the crops are already springing back, even at this time of year. I'm told that we'll have new crops back before the winter gets too harsh, and that even if we don't; the greenhouses are churning out soft fruits and seedlings at an incredible rate. The Red Weed took away our food in life, and gave it back three fold in death."

Ivy let out a breath explosively. "Thank God. Thank you God." Relief made her weak at the knees. "It means... it means we can stay. The whole way back, I was trying to decide where we would go, and now we don't have to."

Kitty laughed, thrilled at having escaped disaster. "You would not have believed the place over the last week. The whole town was covered, from one end of the perimeter to the other, under a carpet of Red Weed."

"Out there, too." Ivy confirmed.

"When we realized it was useful to rejuvenate the soil, we sent everyone we could into the Woods to start collecting it before it dissolved." Kitty reported, very pleased with herself. "I explored the woods."

Ivy giggled, delighted for her.

Kitty gave her another hug. "We spent days trying to sort out the truth from the lies, and the village was drowning in Red Weed, and you didn't come back, and... We just got madder and madder at them."

"Fear." Ivy nodded. "I went through it myself. Fear is so powerful an emotion, and then it gets taken away so fast, you have to... I don't know quite how to say it, but you have to fill up your heart with something else."

Kitty nodded. "Fear gave way to such horrible anger. Ivy, you had to go through it alone. Our rage fed off each other. You have no idea the... wrath that swept through this place."

Ivy shivered. "You'd be surprised. I've seen it, out there. You put a large crowd together and make them all scared, or angry, and you get a violent mob." Ivy shivered hard. "I would hate to see my home turn into that."

Kitty nodded, feeling it with her. "There was so much anger. Mr Nicholson was attacked in his home one night, we have no idea who did it. Mrs Hunt went into hiding. Someone tried to set fire to the Percy house. The one thing we had to hold onto was the hope that the four of you would come back."

"Three." Ivy whispered. "Kevin did not survive."

Kitty gave her little sister a sympathetic hug. "And I take it that help is not coming?"

Ivy shook her head. "No. I thought our expedition had failed, but thank heavens that it did. If we had managed to bring help, the village would be full of strangers now."

Kitty snorted. "That's how it's felt all week. Every time we asked our Elders another question, we just got further and further away from the people we knew."

"I'm told that some of the villagers were in favor of execution." Ivy commented. "How'd you talk them out of that one?"

Kitty was notably silent.

Ivy glanced over in surprise. "Kitty?"

Kitty looked down. "People with immediate family in on the deception were not permitted to vote. They felt we could not be impartial... But I'm ashamed to say that when the question of Capital Punishment came up, I didn't even argue the point."

"Kitty, our mother is in that room!" Ivy exclaimed. "And now Papa too!"

"I know." Kitty whispered. "Part of me had hoped you would leave him out there. He may have been safer than here, facing our... rage." Kitty wrapped her arms around herself, holding something in. "Ivy, I've never hated anyone before."

"I know."

"But I think back to what I was before I knew the truth. You remember? Every drill, I was shaking in my shoes. Every time that bell rang out over the town, I was sobbing. Ivy... I was in panic every time the little red flowers bloomed."

"I remember."

Kitty returned to her seat in the classroom. "When you were born, I was five years old." She said wistfully. "Papa told me that as your older sister, I was to protect you. But you always protected me. You were the brave one in the family, even then."

Ivy sat in her seat too. Two sisters back in school, facing their father's empty desk, holding hands tightly. "I wanted you to be proud of me." Ivy whispered. "You and the others were scared of the woods, the monsters... I wanted you to be proud of me for being brave."

"I was." Kitty confirmed. "But the others grew up and became stoic. I... did not. You remember after you returned, when that cursed bell tolled, and you refused to go inside?"

"I remember."

"I was out of control that night." Kitty said, ashamed of herself. "I was running back and forth in hysterics, smashing into the basement walls from the terror. I was convinced that I had abandoned you to die, but I couldn't make myself be brave enough to go and get you..." Kitty wiped her face, her eyes starting to blaze. "And it was our own father in a costume the whole time." She said with venom. "Our whole lives, we lived in fear of the woods. Every direction you looked, you would see the woods. We were  _literally_  surrounded by fear, our whole lives."

"I know." Ivy said gently. She knew exactly how her sister felt.

"So yes, I took him back." Kitty said with a tight smile. "If I'm disgusted with myself for jumping at shadows, I can't be mad at my husband for doing the same. I don't blame Christop. I blame Papa." She sighed. "Mama said the first thing that a mother learns is how to love and comfort her babies. And our mothers told us lies about scary monsters." Kitty raged, her voice low with the anger. "They didn't comfort us, Ivy. They didn't make us feel safe, they deliberately made us more afraid. They lied. I don't know who those people in the Quiet Room are, but they don't get to call themselves our family."

Silence.

"Oh my god, tell me it wasn't your idea." Ivy breathed.

"It wasn't." Kitty promised her. "But I am ashamed to admit I didn't fight the suggestion, even without the vote."

Ivy slid out of her seat and gave her sister a tight hug.

"I'll be honest with you, Ivy. I don't know if I can face them again." Kitty whispered. "How did you handle it? When Papa told you, how did you not just slap him?"

"I wanted to." Ivy admitted. "But I had far more important things to focus on that day."

Kitty sighed. "So. You're back."

"We're back." Ivy confirmed. "I had thought that we were returning in disgrace, back from a failed quest; here to give you the bad news."

Comfortable silence.

"How long do we keep them all locked up?" Ivy asked. "Who's in charge now?"

Kitty grinned. "Well, the consensus is that we want you and Lucius to appoint a new council... as long as the two of you are on it."

"Us?" Ivy was surprised. "Kitty, we knew about the deception too, just not as long as they did."

"Perhaps, but neither of you knew when you tried to leave the village for the good of others. You were the only ones not... broken. The rest of us would have starved to death rather than go into the woods for food, even after we knew it was all a lie."

"Kitty..." Ivy breathed. "We have to find a way to take them back. Like you did with Christop, we have to find a way to forgive."

Kitty's face went hard. "No."

"We have to. We can't send them out there."

Kitty looked awkward. "Ivy, I don't know how to tell you this, but even with the Martians, I think that most of the people in this Village would rather leave themselves, than have things stay as they are. Either the Liars go, or we do."

Ivy took Kitty's hand, and brought it to her stomach. "Even if nobody else can, I have to find a way to live with our parents."

Kitty's eyes boggled. "Oh."

"I only just found out." Ivy whispered. "Are you angry?"

"Why would I be angry?"

Ivy said nothing.

"You think I'm jealous." Kitty said, her voice suddenly flat. "Because you got Lucius, and I got Christop. Because you're the younger sister and you got a child, and I've had my husband out of the house for months. Because the entire town is begging you to be in charge, and I'm..." Kitty's voice broke. "Ivy, of course I'm jealous. But I love you far too much to let that emotion have any power over me... And I'm far too furious at...  _more deserving_  people to spare much wrath for the woman who braved the woods." Kitty pulled her sister close and kissed her cheeks tenderly. "But I see no reason to have Mama and Papa's lies inflicted on another innocent youth."

"I cannot tell my child that I exiled, or executed grandma and grandpa." She looked hard in Kitty's direction. "Why haven't you asked me the big question?"

"About the Martians?" Kitty guessed. "Frankly, I think we're having an easier time with that one after seeing the town smothered in The Bad Color all week."

Ivy sank in on herself. "We had two tasks to perform: Find proof of Martians invading, and get food. If we'd just stayed in the damn village another week, we'd have had both delivered to us, and Kevin would have survived. Pardon my language." A single tear ran down her face. "He didn't want to go, Kitty. He saved our lives, more than twice each; and we sent him back out there. We sent him out there, because we were more concerned with what we needed than what he deserved. Just like Papa would have."

Kitty didn't have answer to that. "It was still the right thing to do."

* * *

"It was the wrong thing to do." Ivy told her husband weakly.

The villagers had learned the basic facts. There really was an Extermination, Kevin had not survived their expedition, and the Red Weed Dust was bringing back their supplies, so they neither had, nor needed any help from the outside. Any further announcements or judgments could wait until the weary travelers had a meal and some rest; which was good enough for a village full of people, just glad to have their heroes back safe.

Ivy wanted to sleep, but knew she wouldn't. Lucius had taken her to her favorite rocking chair, brought inside from the porch. She had pushed him into it first, curling up in his lap while he rocked them both. Ivy wasn't sure if she felt old and brittle after what she had experienced, or if she felt like a foolish child wanting someone she loved to comfort her; but Lucius was as reassuring and strong an anchor as he ever was, and she loved him for it.

"The village wants my father driven into the woods like a feral dog because he lied to us for so long. If the Elders stay, the others will not..." Ivy said into his neck. "And I am seriously considering whether or not to tell the villagers another lie, just to keep the farce going, and make everyone stay where they are."

Lucius was stunned. "Why?"

"Because it worked!" Ivy raged quietly. "It worked! The Elders' mad experiment worked. The Village remains, and the Towns are in ruins. Children died, Noah died, I lost my sight, and we've spent forty years cowering away from trees, and yet Kevin  _still_  considered this place paradise after a week in the World according to The Martians. I was ready to sneak out with you in the middle of the night, and after a day in that camp, this is heaven."

Lucius snorted. "I know what you mean. Kevin said that those Sky Machines that sent us all into hiding were ours. The world is a hundred years ahead of where we thought it was, and can do things that we can't imagine, and it was nothing compared to the Invaders. The world was spared by infection. The germs that killed the Nicholson boy, and the Farley Child, and over a dozen others, and very nearly me... Those germs saved the world from extinction."

"We were so scared of those trees for so long we forgot that there was a way to live without fear... But if it wasn't for those lies, we'd all be dead right now." Ivy sank deeper into his arms. "I don't want to send Papa away. Especially not after the last several days. I am so tempted to just... tell everyone that the Martians are still winning. Telling them that the world is barely standing is enough to keep them here a while, but-"

"But to make them stay forever, we have to keep them afraid." Lucius finished.

Ivy crumbled. "I am my father."

Lucius shushed her, rocking them a little. "Ivy, your father just wanted to make everything dangerous go away and protect his kids, even from growing up."

Ivy stilled in his lap, but said nothing.

"Before we knew about the Martians, we were thinking about leaving. Now we know about the Red Weed Dust. If it's good for growing here, then it's doing the same everywhere else. Wherever the Martians have touched, the world will be green and healthy again. That soldier said it would take a year for the world to recover, but we both know the cities are done. Kevin said that all the cities were hit that way, so where will the rebuilding come from? Another year, and most people will be living the way we do."

Ivy chuckled. "Kevin also said that nobody knew how any more. Anyone that doesn't learn will starve. I don't know, maybe leaving the Village and going to the Towns isn't about saving ourselves. Maybe it's about saving the Towns. Who knows? Maybe Covington will be the new capital city."

Lucius found that hilarious.

Ivy sighed, feeling better. Shy, quiet Lucius only laughed for her.

Lucius rocked her for a little while, and she started to drift. "I suppose I had better get started on a nursery."

"Mmhm." She mumbled, half asleep.

He scooped her up and carried her to bed, tucking her in. "In the morning."

"...kay." Ivy yawned. "Love you."

"Love you."

* * *

Ivy and Lucius rose early the next morning. They could have slept for a week, but they still had business to attend to. Before anyone else woke, they crept to the Quiet Room.

Edward, Alice and Tabitha were waiting for them; the only ones in the room awake. Lucius and Ivy each embraced their parents, and went to the nearest private place they could, which was one of the guard towers. Christop was on guard duty; and he left them alone without a word.

"By now, I'm sure you know how things have changed in the Village." Edward commented.

"Kitty has made it clear that there's no chance of a full reconciliation." Ivy nodded. "And she said it of both her parents. Most people in this village don't have that strong a connection to any of the Elders."

Edward sighed. "Your mother says it is a sentiment shared by much of the Village." He gave Ivy a careful look. "She also tells me that there were some... extreme suggestions put about."

"I've heard them." Ivy nodded. "What did you expect? Did you think they would be grateful if they ever found out?"

Edward sighed. "In truth, Ivy... I didn't think it would go this far. I made up the story on the spot to keep kids from wandering too far from town. I never intended things to turn out like this."

Alice offered her opinion. "There is still a connection, through family, if nothing else. Perhaps with some time..." She sighed ruefully. "Perhaps with a  _great deal_  of time, things may change."

"I don't think we have that kind of time, mother." Lucius broke it to her gently. "Anger demands action, and if we tell them we do not intend to take any for a while, someone will act alone."

"They've already tried." Edward waved a hand back toward the Quiet Room.

Long silence.

"Papa, I love you, but I don't know that I can forgive this." Ivy said simply. "This is a lie that not only tormented a whole community, it actually cost lives. How do we get back to where we were?"

"We can't." Tabitha said firmly; the first words she had spoken in the conversation. "Edward and I have discussed it at length, and shared our opinion with the others. We have a proposal."

"That being?"

"We will leave." Tabitha said simply. "Most of us are willing to go, the ones that don't want to? They at least recognize that we  _have_ to, because our lives are made worthless here by the things we did in the name of this experiment."

Lucius spoke up. "I assume Edward told you the facts of life outside the village."

"He did." Alice promised her son. "He also told us the war was over. The world is in trouble, but not on the verge of extinction any longer. Depending on where you live; this was true long before the invasion."

"If you go..." Ivy whispered. "You won't be allowed to come back. At least, not for a very long time. Probably never."

"That is understood." Edward commented. "But the truth is, Ivy... you don't need us any more. Children strike out on their own, and build their own lives, independent of their parents. It's how you come into your own. In a closed community like Covington, that never gets a chance to happen properly. Well, now it can."

"We know that the others want to put Lucius and Ivy in charge of a whole new Council." Tabitha added. "The first thing they'll expect you to do is pass judgment on us. If you let us off the hook, it will be the last thing you ever do as leaders of this community. But if you send us all away..."

"A lie?" Lucius asked.

"A pledge." Edward countered. His face softened as his eyes focused on his daughter. "Ivy, I've been trying to decide for a week... in fact, for twenty years. If I had to do it over again, would I still start this? I still don't have an answer, but the Elders do. And the answer is no. But if we can turn this disaster into something that works, simply by stepping aside, then it's worth it."

"And this is what the Elders all want?"

"Want? No. But we are in agreement." Tabitha told them. "But now it's up to you to convince those that will remain. Can you do it?"

Ivy and Lucius drew tightly to each other. "I believe so."

* * *

The Meeting was called the next morning, after the morning meal. The stores were still low, though not dangerously so any longer, so food was a little less heavy on the tables. Ivy and Lucius had been on the road for a week, and any fresh food was more than enough for them.

But breakfast was not really the topic on everyone's mind; and they gathered in the Town Hall.

"The stories are true. Earth has been invaded." Lucius reported. "But apparently, the Invaders were not to the Earth's liking. The Martians are dead, as far as we can tell, to the last one standing. So is the Red Weed, as you already know. Humanity is safe."

A light round of applause broke out at this news.

"But this is not exactly good news. The Towns have been all but obliterated. In the week and a half the world has been at war, there is almost nothing of it left standing. I'm told, by sources that i trust, that the whole planet was dependent on the large cities, and now they are all gone. What people survived the war are now fighting to the death over food, water and other valuables." Ivy paused a moment. "Kevin was killed by humans, not by Martians."

A sympathetic murmur covered the room.

Lucius rose to his feet. "The only thing the Martians took from us was a lie. Our crops are growing again, our people are home safe from the Martians. We cannot say the same of what humans have done. Human attackers killed Kevin. Humans are the only ones left." Lucius held up his hands. "I'm not trying to make you afraid of the world... Only reminding you that... for all the evil that the Elders visited upon us with their lies, those lies saved us all."

Dead silence.

"He's right." Ivy rose to stand beside her husband. "I've seen what the Martians leave behind them, and it is nothing but death. Had we been born in the world outside, we would all be dead right now."

Dead silence.

"The most important lesson Kevin taught me, was that the past can haunt you with questions." Lucius said finally. "Everywhere beyond these woods, the past is dead; burned away to nothing, and only dust remains." He paused, to let that sink in. "The only thing left now is the future."

Silence.

"First." Ivy said seriously. "This village has gone for long enough without desiring death. Of all the things in the village to be ashamed of; that principle is not one of them. I understand wanting revenge, believe me..." Ivy sighed. "There is enough death in the world, and not enough mercy."

And on the faces of the villagers, there was relief. Lucius noted it and squeezed his wife's hand. She squeezed back, registering. It was their unspoken language. If he'd kept gripping her hand tightly, it would have been a warning. A quick squeeze was reassurance.

"Now to the matter of exile." Ivy continued. "In the event that we had found a place for ourselves out there, Lucius and I had spoken of leaving, long before we learned of the Extermination."

Her words set off a murmur.

"But after having seen the world outside the woods, and what little is left of it, I think that perhaps sending anyone away is not so merciful as one may think."

The statement made everyone hesitate. They weren't sure if Ivy was suggesting letting them get away with it or not. Doing so would be an extremely unpopular move. Ivy knew that, but social politics was never her area. She was far too... honest for that.

"Bring out the accused." Lucius ordered.

* * *

The Elders were brought out of the Quiet Room, and assembled on stage.

Ivy and Lucius was in front of them. "Members of the Council." Lucius said, with a firm tone he didn't really feel. "This is the very last time you will ever stand on this stage."

A round of approval rang out. It was angry, and loud, but restrained to making noise.

"Father, you know that we cannot just pretend it didn't happen." Ivy warned.

"I do." Edward nodded. " _We_  do."

Lucius spoke. "By your own design, Mister Walker, we have no prisons here. We have no stocks, or hard labor; and nobody wants to spare the food for you anyway." He spread his hands wide. "Your experiment with Those-We-Don't-Speak-Of was callous, cruel, terrifying... and it worked. It is also over."

"Papa, you cannot stay. Nobody will stand for it. The entire Village is united in that." Ivy said calmly. "Either you leave, or they do... And they have done nothing wrong. Our whole lives you've been telling us that evil people lived in the Towns, and we've proven you liars about everything else. Tomorrow you face the consequences."

The plan was organized the night before. Ivy and Lucius had rehearsed their words over and over again; and yet it still felt... cold.

"You started this farce to protect us. As your protectorates, we have declared your methods to be unworthy. It's over, because the people you have terrified and put down for thirty years have decided it's over."

"You will be given food enough to make it to Philadelphia." Lucius declared. "Four days. From there, you're on your own. You leave at dawn tomorrow."

Ivy turned her sightless gaze over the townsfolk. "Just remember, I went through this too. For all the anger you feel, they're still family. Say the things you need to say, because come the morning, you won't have the chance." She waved a hand vaguely. "Take them back to their homes, let them prepare for their journey."

The Elders were marched out. Lucius peeked at the watching villagers subtly. They were glad to see it happen. They wanted the Elders gone.

Once they were out of the room, Lucius called them to attention. "Now, we have other matters to attend to. First, someone might want to leave the village with them. Right now, there is little to go back to, but within a year or two, that may change."

* * *

The Meeting lasted another hour and a half. Ivy and Lucius hammered out a new set of rules for the Village, voted on by the town. The truth coming out had changed everything about their lifestyle. The village had always had a vegetarian diet, since the livestock was only butchered as sacrifices to imaginary creatures. That changed. The color red was forbidden, as it was supposed to attract the monsters. That changed. There was always a watch set up on the edge of the woods. That remained. There were still dangers beyond the trees. Nobody was ever allowed to enter the treeline. That changed.

New members for the council were selected, and questions answered about the world past the trees.

* * *

"Now, I would like to bring up a personal matter." Ivy said finally. "If the answer is no, I will bow to your wishes... But I would ask that you hear me out." She took a breath. "I wish Doctor Victor Collison to remain in the village for a while."

Murmuring broke out. The anger had blunted after an hour of careful discussion about things that mattered, but the anger against the Elders would be quick to return, and Ivy was asking for there to be an exception to the Exile.

"First of all, he's the best trained doctor we have. If he left, we'd be in trouble if there was a sickness or a serious injury here. Whatever else he did, he worked to save lives; including that of Lucius."

There was... acceptance, but not agreement. They knew she was right, but the anger still ran deeper.

"And I wanted..." Ivy sighed. "I wanted to keep this to myself a while longer, but I'd like the town Doctor to stay around for the next... nine months or so."

Stunned silence. And then everyone was smiling. Ivy was the town hero, and she was giving them the first bit of good news they'd had in the worst week of their lives.

Lucius smiled broader than anyone had ever seen. "All in favor?"

* * *

Making an exception for Victor was the break the new Leaders of the Village needed. The simple proof that someone they hated could still be of use opened the door for a few others. August Nicholson was called back in and questioned about the possibility of creating electricity from the river, now that they knew electricity existed.

August was an engineer before the Village, and had designed most of the buildings, including the foundry. Plans were agreed upon for a windmill to pump well water, and to grind flour. The project would take several weeks.

A few days passed, and the Elders were equipping themselves for their journeys. For all the rage that the lies had conjured, nobody in the village had ever once been more than half a mile from any member of their family. The goodbyes were oddly emotional.

Alice had made no effort to save herself, but Kitty Walker had spoken passionately about having Alice stay on, as Victor's nurse. A few eyes glanced to Ivy, but the younger Walker sister was so blatantly stunned by the effort, nobody thought to ask if the request was planned.

* * *

"Why?" Lucius had asked with somewhat delighted shock, once they had privacy. "Kitty, you and my mother were never very close."

"I know." Kitty admitted. "But I feel I owe you something; after very nearly causing a rift between my sister and myself over you. And I think that my nephew or niece should have the chance to meet at least one grandparent."

Lucius didn't know what to say to that.

"And also..." Kitty glanced around. "My father was the architect of this lie. You and Ivy wanted to leave more than anyone, and now, by virtue of our need for a leader, we seem to have roped you into staying, despite yourself."

"Your need and an invasion from another planet." Ivy pointed out.

"Granted." Kitty nodded. "But... I'll never get the chance to forgive father. I think, since you're family, the least I can do for you is to give you and your mother a chance."

The raw pain in her voice was so obvious that even Lucius winced.

Kitty made her goodbyes then, and left the two of them.

"I wish I could return the favor." Lucius admitted to his wife. "I wanted to strangle your father at times, Ivy... But after all that we've seen with him, after the war, and the refugee camps, and the..." He shook his head. "I find I care less and less about lies, when the truth is awful enough."

"Me too." Ivy whispered. "But Lucius... Kitty and I feel this betrayal more deeply than anyone, because my father came up with the idea. How anyone looked past that long enough to offer me a place on the new Town council..."

"Thank your father for that." Lucius said with grim irony. "Your fearlessness in the face of Those-We-Do-Not-Speak-Of made you a hero. Maybe a legend."

Ivy snorted. "The one layer of the lie that everyone wanted to embrace. A hero instead of a monster."

"Edward would say we should take advantage of it." Lucius chewed his lip. "Where would I find Fenton Coin at this time of day?"

* * *

Nobody knew Lucius had suggested it, but at the next Town Meeting, Fenton Coin rose from his seat and made a request that the school be brought up to date, teaching the next generation what was actually outside the woods.

Ivy carefully said nothing, but the debate was fierce. There was, after all, only one man in the Village that had trained as a professional teacher, and who knew about the 20th century, and had seen the world outside the woods during the Expedition.

Edward was the most controversial decision that the new council had made, and Ivy abstained from the vote.

* * *

The Exiles were ready to go, checking their supplies. There was an odd sense of things coming full circle.

"We left the world once, when it was for the good of our children." Tabitha Walker told them. "Now they require us to return to the world, for the same reason."

That much they agreed on.

The woods would not allow wheels, so horse, or hand pulled carts were impossible. Some of the loads were carried on large stretchers; as supplies were carried in decades before; but the Elders were older and weaker in body now, so some of the younger members of the village volunteered to carry their loads as far as the end of the Woods.

And Edward took an opportunity to speak privately with his wife. "Tabitha, Lucius came to see me this morning. He says that they may offer Exception for me if I update the school curriculum."

"They want us to stay?" Tabitha couldn't believe it.

Edward answered without thinking. "Not both of us."

Long silence.

Tabitha's face turned hard. "Can you talk to them?"

"And say what?"

"And you  _do_ intend to stay." It was not a question.

Edward took a breath. "Tabby, if-"

"Don't call me that just now." She said calmly. Too calmly. "They'll never let us come back, Edward. And if the world is as you say it is, then it doesn't matter if we're apart six days or six years. You'll never find us again."

Cold silence.

"Tabitha, if Ivy and Lucius intend to make this work, someone will have to teach the next generation the truth. Thirty years in that schoolhouse, I've never taught anyone the facts, and it gnawed at me all that time." Edward said softly. "It's for the best that some of us stay."

Tabitha's face hardened. "It's for the best that we go. We agreed to that."

"Ivy and Lucius disagree."

"Ivy can't make an exception for her father."

"Fenton Coin can for the education of his son."

Tabitha glared. "Edward, would you still agree to stay if Alice was coming with us?"

Edward was caught unawares by that one.

Tabitha let him search for words, and when he found none, she turned on her heel and left him, returning to the rest of the Exiles. Edward was absolutely sure that he'd never see her again.

* * *

The world rebuilt. It was slow going, with the infrastructure wiped out. With so few cities left standing, there was little that could organize a worldwide reconstruction. To avoid starvation, the majority of areas split up into small townships. Covington Village was one of the better organized and well prepared places; though nobody knew it existed.

The Village survived, with the Red Weed Dust to save their farms. Edward was allowed to teach, but a year later, the job was passed to Kitty and Christop, who took well to it. Edward moved to a small house, as far from the rest of the village as he could get; and kept to himself; though his daughters visited him regularly.

Perhaps the most obvious change to Covington Village was the date. Ivy never went back to wearing a corset or dress; and most young women were quick to follow, glad to wear trousers while out in the fields, or the woods. Edward made his radio available to the whole village; and it was kept in the Town Hall. The whole village was kept informed of what was being transmitted.

As the world rebuilt, radio became the most effective form of mass communication left. News, interviews, eyewitness reports, even music. The villagers heard it all, and began the long process of aligning themselves to some extent with the 21st century.

Most of the changes to the village were cosmetic. Red was now a part of the landscape. Ivy and Lucius knew when to push them, and when to let them hold on to their old superstitions.

The subject of making contact with the outside world came up once or twice as the news over the radio improved. A few of the Elders had skill with engineering. Skills that had gone long unused, but they were eager to prove themselves useful still, and more modern touches became apparent, such as the river getting a new waterwheel to generate electricity for the first time.

Tabitha and the other Exiles had never returned to the Village. There was no contact from them on the radio; though some reports said that small freeholds were being set up, and farming communities growing more common, with the help of people who knew how to make such things work. These 'experts' were going from town to town, helping and educating where they could. Their names were rarely transmitted, but the Village knew who they were.

After a discreet interval, Alice Hunt moved her things to Edward's little home on the edge of the woods. Nobody commented on it. A year before, it would have been a huge scandal, but it was nothing compared to what had already been revealed.

Ivy and Lucius had a son. They named him Kevin.

* * *

A few hundred miles from the place that used to be called Philadelphia, there is a wall that circles hundreds of square miles of forest. It is a wildlife preserve that has been sealed for forty years. It is said by those who scavenge in the area that a Tripod fell there, on the edge of the woods. It is said that the pilot of that Tripod was never found.

For the most part, nobody has business there, but those who have entered the woods for hunting say that it is a dangerous place, filled with loose ground and cold mud, unsuitable for farming or building.

They say that you can hear the howls of wild animals whenever the winds blow. They say that nobody has ever seen these animals, but the Ranger Stations on the perimeter stand empty; and are full of reports of predators and creatures that roam the woods, seeking prey.

Some people believe that the Woods are haunted by the spirits of human and Martian alike. Nobody has gone into those woods for decades, and with humanity barely limping on, nobody sees a reason to take a chance on investigating.

They say that maybe one Martian survived, and is living in the Deep Woods, hiding from humanity.

They say that every so often, late at night, a few people will wander out of the deep woods, wrapped in cloaks the color of the Red Weed; and make their way to the nearest colony of survivors, seeking news of the world outside, and asking for strange, unusual things, like piano wire, or household spices.

They say that when these people return to the woods, they were never seen again; vanishing like ghosts into the trees. They say that people who go looking for the secret of Covington Woods never come back. They say that the Haunted Woods are to be avoided at all cost.

Of course, these are only rumors.

End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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